x ay 
ay 


THE LIFE OF JAMES 
McNEILL WHISTLER 


THE LIFE OF JAMES 
McNEILL WHISTLER 


BY 
BoR. anp |. PENNELL 


ILLUSTRATED 


PHILADELPHIA 
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 
1925 


er ms ¢ 9 us 
. is ae 2 $ 


BY THE. 


PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY ITEF 
LONDON AND TONBRIDGE 


s 


PREFACE TO THE SIXTH EDITION 


Tue Fifth Edition of this book was exhausted before the war; it has 
been impracticable to reprint it until now, and the present Sixth Edition 
has been revised and brought up to date with material, including new 
illustrations, which has come to hand in the interval. The book has 
been translated into French, and other translations are foreshadowed, 
for the popularity of Whistler has constantly increased. There have 
been many exhibitions of his paintings in Europe and in America ; 
galleries and private collectors are competing for anything they can 
acquire. The portrait of his mother has even served as a placard for 
war propaganda. Prices paid for Whistler works, paintings as well as 
lithographs, have steadily increased, and some very remarkable prices 
have been paid for his portraits of Mrs. Leyland and Lady Meux— 
prices which rival those paid for Old Masters. Mr. Freer’s collection is 
on the point of being transferred to Washington, where there is also a 
collection of Whistleriana, brought together by the authors of this book. 

No lives or special works of criticism on Whistler have been pub- 
lished during the war, but a “‘ life ” is promised by Mr. Freer which is to 
correct or “ supersede ” the authorised life. This book has been long 
delayed, and so have the Whistler letters, which Miss Philip has in hand. 

We wish to thank, for the permission to reproduce paintings and 
drawings, to consult letters and documents, Mrs. A. J. Cassatt, Mr. 
Mitchell Kennerley, Mr. Roland Knoedler, Messrs. Keppel and Com- 
pany, Mr. George J. C. Grasberger, Mr. A. E. Gallatin, Mr. R. C. Frick, 
Mr. West, Colonel Hughes, Mr. E. G. Kennedy, The Metropolitan 
Museum of New York, The Maryland Institute, the Librarian of Con- 
gress, Dr. Putnam and Dr. Koch, Mr. Roberts, and Miss Wright, also 
of the Library of Congress. 

JosEPpH PENNELL 
EvizaABETH Roxpins PENNELL 


PUBLISHER’S NOTE TO THE FIFTH EDITION 
Mr. anp Mrs. PEennett’s authorised Life of Fames McNeill Whistler 


appeared in two volumes in October 1908, and has had to be reprinted 
in that form three times since then. Its sale even in that comparatively 
expensive form has been an unexpectedly large one, proving without 
doubt that interest in Whistler’s life is alive and growing. During 
the three years since its first publication much new material has 
come into the hands of the authors, and a complete revision of the 
book has therefore become necessary. The present volume is, to all 
intents and purposes, a new one. Many of the older illustrations in 
the earlier editions have been superseded by new ones, a number of 
which are reproduced for the first time. 

For the new material included in this edition the authors and the 
publisher are indebted to friends and numerous sympathetic corre- 
spondents, and they wish to express their indebtedness especially to 
Mr. John W. Beatty, Director of the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh ; 
Mr. E. D. Brooks; Mr. Clifford Gore Chambers; Mr. E. T. Cook; 
Mr. Leon Dabo; Mr. Frederick Dielmann; Messrs. Dowdeswell ; 
M. Théodore Duret; Mr. A. J. Eddy; Mrs. Wickham Flower ; 
Right Hon. Jonathan Hogg; Mr. H. 8. Hubbell; Mr. Will H. Low ; 
Mr. Burton Mansfield; Judge Parry; Mr. H. Reinhardt; Mr. H. 58. 
Ridings; Mr. Albert Rouiller; Miss Alice Rouiller; Mr. William 
Scott; M. Stréhlen; Mr. Ross Turner; Mr. C. F. G. Turner; 
Mr. C. Howard Walker; Mr. J. H. Wrenn. 


b Vil 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER I. THE WHISTLER FAMILY. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN 
THIRTY-FOUR TO EIGHTEEN FORTY-THREE 


Whistler’s Ancestors—His Parents—Birth—Early Years 


CHAPTER iI. IN RUSSIA. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN FORTY- 
THREE TO EIGHTEEN FORTY-NINE 


Life in Russia—Schooldays—Begins his Avt Studies in the Imperial 
Academy of Fine Arts—Death of Major Whistler—Return to America 


CHAPTER III. SCHOOLDAYS IN POMFRET. THE YEARS 
EIGHTEEN FORTY-NINE TO EIGHTEEN FIFTY-ONE 


The Pomfret School and Schoolmates—Early drawings 


CHAPTER IV. WEST POINT. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN FIFTY- 
ONE TO EIGHTEEN FIFTY-FOUR 


Whistler as Cadet in the U.S. Military Academy—His Studies—Failure— 
Stories told of hhm—His Estimate of West Point 


CHAPTER V. THE COAST SURVEY. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN 
FIFTY-FOUR AND EIGHTEEN FIFTY-FIVE 


Life in Washington—Obtains Position as Draughtsman in the U.S. Coast 
and Geodetic Survey—First Plates—Resignation—Starts for Paris 


CHAPTER VI. STUDENT DAYS IN THE LATIN QUARTER. 
THE YEARS EIGHTEEN FIFTY-FIVE TO EIGHTEEN FIFTY- 
NINE 
Arrival in Pavis—Enters as Student at Gleyre’s—His Fellow Students— 
A dventures—J ourney to Alsace 


CHAPTER VII. WORKING DAYS IN THE LATIN QUARTER. 
THE YEARS EIGHTEEN FIFTY-FIVE TO EIGHTEEN FIFTY- 
NINE CONTINUED 
His Studies—Work at the Louvyve—Visit to Avt Treasures Exhibition at 
Manchester—Eitchings—Paintings—Rejection at the Salon and Exhibition 
in Bonvin’s Studio 


CHAPTER VIII. THE BEGINNINGS IN LONDON. THE YEARS 
EIGHTEEN FIFTY-NINE TO EIGHTEEN SIXTY-THREE 


In London with the Hadens—First Appearance at Royal Academy—Kind- 
ness to French Fellow Students—Shares Studio with Du Maurier— 
Gaieties—Mr. Arthur Severn’s Reminiscences—W ork on the River—Jo— 
Etchings Published by Mr. Edmund Thomas 


PAGE 


18 


20 


27 


33 


46 


53 


ix 


CoNTENTS 


CHAPTER IX. THE BEGINNINGS IN LONDON. THE YEARS 
EIGHTEEN FIFTY-NINE TO EIGHTEEN SIXTY-THREE CON- 
TINUED 


Paintings and Exhibitions—The Music Room—Visits to Mr. and 
Mrs. Edwin Edwards—Summer in Brittany—‘ The White Girl”’— 
Berners Street Gallery—Baudelaire on his Etchings—lIllustrations—Salon 
des Refuses—First Gold Medal 


CHAPTER X. CHELSEA DAYS. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN SIXTY- 
THREE TO EIGHTEEN SIXTY-SIX 


Setiles with his Mother at No. 7 Lindsey Row, Chelsea—The Greaves 
Family—The Limerston Street Studio and Mr. J. E. Christie—Rossetti— 
The Tudor House Circle, Swinburne, Meredith, Frederick Sandys, Howell 
—‘ Blue and White ’’—W. M. Rossetti’s Reminiscences 


CHAPTER XI. CHELSEA DAYS. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN SIXTY- 
THREE TO EIGHTEEN SIXTY-SIX CONTINUED 


The Japanese Pictures—‘‘ The Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine ’’— 
Japanese Influence—‘ The Little White Girl’’—Fantin’s “‘ Hommage a 
Delacroix ’’—‘‘ The Toast’’—Arrival in London of Dr. Whistler—At 
Trouville with Courbet—Journey to Valparaiso 


CHAPTER XII. CHELSEA DAYS CONTINUED. THE YEARS 
EIGHTEEN SIXTY-SIX TO EIGHTEEN SEVENTY-TWO 


Return to London—Removal to No. 2 Lindsey Row—The House and its 
Decorations—The 1867 Exhibition in Paris—Affair at the Burlington 
Fine Arts Club—‘ Symphony in White, No. III.” the First Picture 
Exhibited as a Symphony—Theories—Developbment—Discouragement— 
Mr. Fred Jameson’s Reminiscences—Decoration—Hamerton’s “‘ Etching 
and Etchers ’’—Eitchings and Dry-points—Exhibitions—Rejection at the 
Royal Academy—First Exhibition of Picture as a Nocturne—Relations 
to the Royal Academy 


CHAPTER XIII. NOCTURNES. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN SEVENTY- 
TWO TO EIGHTEEN SEVENTY-EIGHT 


Nocturnes—Extent of Debt to Japanese—Methods and Materials—Sub- 
jects—Origin of Title—His Explanation in “ The Gentle Art” 


CHAPTER XIV. PORTRAITS. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN SEVENTY- 
ONE TO EIGHTEEN SEVENTY-FOUR 
“The Mother ’’—‘‘ Carlyle’’—‘‘ Miss Alexander’”’—Mr. and Mrs. 
Leyland—Mrs. Louis Huth—Show of his own Work in Pall Mall— 
Indignation roused by his Titles 


PAGE 


63 


76 


86 


97 


IIi2 


118 


CoNTENTS 


Pueaeteneav. THE OPEN DOOR.” ‘THE YEAR’ EIGHTEEN 
SEVENTY-FOUR AND AFTER 


Whistler’s Gaiety and Hospitality—His Amusement in Society—His 
Dinners and Sunday Breakfasts—Reminiscences of his Entertainments— 
His Talk—Clubs—Restaurants—The Theatre 


CHAPTER XVI. THE PEACOCK ROOM. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN . 


SEVENTY-FOUR TO EIGHTEEN SEVENTY-SEVEN 


Work at Exhibitions and in the Studio—Portrait of Ivving—‘ Rosa 
Corder ’’’—‘‘ The Fur Jacket’’—‘‘ Connie Gulchrist’”—The Peacock 
Room—Mr. Leyland’s House in Prince’s Gate—Its Decoration—W histler’s 
Scheme for the Dining-room and its Development—The Work Finished— 
Quarrel with Leyland 


CHAPTER XVII. THE GROSVENOR GALLERY. THE YEARS 
EIGHTEEN SEVENTY-SEVEN AND EIGHTEEN SEVENTY- 
EIGHT 


Siv Coutt Lindsay’s New Gallery—First Exhibition at the Grosvenor— 
Whistler's Contributions—Ruskin’s Criticism of ‘‘ The Falling Rocket”? 
in “‘ Fors Clavigera’’—Whistler sues him for Libel—Etchings—Litho- 
gvaphs—Drawings of Blue and White for Sir Henry Thompson’s Cata- 
logue—Caricatures—Sends a Second Time to the Grosvenor 


CHAPTER XVIII. THE WHITE HOUSE. THE YEAR EIGHTEEN 
SEVENTY-EIGHT 


Paris Universal Exhibition of 1878—Harmony in Yellow and Gold— 
Whistler as Decorator—Lady Archibald Campbell’s Appreciation—Plan 
for Opening an Atelier for Students—No. 2 Lindsey Row given ub—E. W. 
Godwin builds the White House for him—His Mother’s Health—She leaves 
him for Hastings—Money Difficulties—Mezzotints of the “ Carlyle”? and 
““ Rosa Corder ”’ 


CHAPTER XIX. THE TRIAL. THE YEAR EIGHTEEN SEVENTY- 
EIGHT . 


Whistler’s Reasons for the Action against Ruskin—H1s Position and Rus- 
kin’s compared—Refusal of Artists to support Whistler—Trial in the Ex- 
chequer Chamber, Wesiminster—V erdict—T he General Criticism—Mr. T. 
Armstrong and Mr. Arthur Severn on the Trial—Collection to pay Ruskin’s 
Expenses—Failure to raise one for Whistler— Whistler v. Ruskin ”’ 


CHAPTER XX. BANKRUPTCY. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN 
SEVENTY-EIGHT AND EIGHTEEN SEVENTY-NINE 


Whistler again at the Grosvenor—H1s Critics—His Financial Embarrass- 
ments—His Manner of meeting them—Declaved Bankrupt—‘ The Gold 
Scab ’”’—Commission from the Fine Art Society for the Venetian Etchings 
—Starts for Venice—The Sale of the White House—Sale of Blue and 
White, Pictures, Prints, &c., at Sotheby’s 


PAGE 


128 


143 


152 


159 


166 


181 


XI 


ConTENTS 


CHAPTER XXI. VENICE. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN SEVENTY- 
NINE AND EIGHTEEN EIGHTY 


Whistler’s Arrival in Venice—First Impressions—Disappointments and 
Difficulttes—His Friends in Venice and theiy Memories of him—Duveneck 
and his “ Boys ’’—Whistler’s Hard Work—His Lodgings and Restaurants 
—The Cafés—Stories told of him—Reminiscences of Mr. Harper Penning- 
ton and Mr. Ralph Curtis 


CHAPTER XXII. VENICE. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN SEVENTY- 
NINE AND EIGHTEEN EIGHTY CONTINUED 


His Work in Venice—Pastels and his Methods—Etchings—Printing— 
Japanese Method of Drawing—Water-colours and Paintings 


CHAPTER XXIII. BACK IN LONDON. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN 
EIGHTY AND EIGHTEEN EIGHTY-ONE 


Return to London and Sudden Appearance at Fine Art Society’s—Prints 
Venice Plates—Exhibition of ‘‘ The Twelve’ at the Fine Art Society’s— 
Exhibition of Venice Pastels—Decoration of Gallery—Bewilderment of 
Critics and Public—Death of his Mother—‘‘ The Piper Papers ’’—The 
Portrait of his Mother exhibited in Philadelphia—Etchings begin to be 
shown in America 


CHAPTER XXIV. THE JOY OF LIFE. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN 
EIGHTY-ONE TO EIGHTEEN EIGHTY-FOUR 


Takes a Studio at No. 13 Tite Stveet—His “ Joyousness ’’—Letters to the 
Press—His “‘ Amazing ’’ Costumes—Portrait of Lady Meux—His Other 
Sitters—Mrs. Marzetti’s Account of the Painting of “ The Blue Girl ’’— 
Lady Archibald Campbell’s Reminiscences of the Sittings for her Portrait— 
Portrait of M. Duret—‘‘ The Paddon Papers ’’—Second Exhibition of 
Venice Etchings at the Fine Art Society’s—Excitement it created—The 
“ Carlyle” at Edinburgh—Proposal to buy it for Scottish National Portrait 
Gallery—Comes to nothing—Whistler involved in a Church Congress 


CHAPTER XXV. AMONG FRIENDS. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN 
EIGHTY-ONE TO EIGHTEEN EIGHTY-SEVEN 


Joseph Pennell meets Whistler—First Impressions—The “‘ Sarasate ’’— 
Sir Seymour Haden 


CHAPTER XXVI. AMONG FRIENDS. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN 

EIGHTY-ONE TO EIGHTEEN EIGHTY-SEVEN CONTINUED 
Whistler’s Friends in Tite Street-—Sir Rennell Rodd’s Reminiscences— 
Oscar Wilde—Reasons for the Friendship and for its short Duration—T he 
Followers—T heir Devotion and their Absurdities—Mr. Harper Penning- 
ton’s Reminiscences of Whistler in London 

X11 


PAGE 


189 


196 


202 


210 


222 


225 


CoNnTENTS 


CHAPTER XXVII. THE STUDIO IN THE FULHAM. ROAD. 
THE YEARS EIGHTEEN EIGHTY-FIVE TO EIGHTEEN EIGHTY- 
SEVEN 


Whistler moves to the Fulham Road—Description of the new Studio— 
Pictures in Progress—Mr. William M. Chase, his Portrait and his 
Reminiscences—Plans to visit America 


Gupte peo vill. THE “TEN  O’CLOCK.” THE YEARS 
EIGHTEEN EIGHTY-FOUR TO EIGHTEEN EIGHTY-EIGHT 


Whistler writes the ‘‘ Ten O’Clock ’—Proposes to publish it as Article— 
Then to deliver it as Lecture in Iveland—Exhibition of his Work in Dublin 
—Arvranges with Mrs. D’Oyly Carte for Lecture in London—The “ Ten 
O’Clock”’ given at Prince’s Hall—The Audience—The Critics—Analysis 
of the ‘‘ Ten O'Clock ’’—Its Delivery in Other Places—Its Publication— 
Swinburne’s Criticism 


CHAPIER XXIX. THE BRITISH ARTISTS.. THE RISE. THE 
YEARS EIGHTEEN EIGHTY-FOUR TO EIGHTEEN EIGHTY-SIX 


Approached by the British Artists—Elected a Member of the Society— 
His Position as Artist at this Period and the Position of the Society— 
Reasons for the Invitation and his Acceptance—His Interest in the Society 
—His Contributions to its Exhibitions—The Graham Sale—Publication of 
Twenty-Six Etchings by Dowdeswell’s—Exhibition of Notes, Harmonies, 
Nocturnes, at Dowdeswell’s—Elected President of the British Artists 


CHAPIEPR AXX. THE BRITISH ARTISTS. THE FALL. THE 

YEARS EIGHTEEN EIGHTY-SIX TO EIGHTEEN EIGHTY- 

EIGHT 
Whistler as President—His Decoration of the Gallery and Hanging of 
Pictures—Indignation by Members—Visit of the Prince of Wales— 
Growing Dissatisfaction in the Society—Jubilee of Queen Victoria— 
Whistler’s Congratulatory Address—British Artists made a Royal Society 
—Dissatisfaction becomes Open Warfare—The Crists—Wyke Bayliss 
elected President—W histler’s Resignation 


CHAPTER XXXI. MARRIAGE. THE YEAR EIGHTEEN EIGHTY- 
EIGHT 
Whistler’s Wedding—Reception at the Tower House—His Wife—His 
Devotion—Influence of Marriage 


CHAPIER XXXII THE WORK OF THE YEARS EIGHTEEN 
EIGHTY TO EIGHTEEN NINETY-TWO 
Water-colours—Etchings, Belgian and Duich—Exhibition of Dutch Eich- 
ings—Lithographs 


PAGE 


233 


250 


262 


271 


274 


Xill 


CoNnTENTS 


CHAPTER XXXIII. HONOURS. EXHIBITIONS. NEW INTE- 
RESTS. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN EIGHTY-NINE TO EIGHTEEN 
NINETY-ONE 
Honours from Paris, Munich, and Amsterdam—Dinner to Whistler— 
Paris Universal Exhibition of 1889—Exhibition of Whistler’s Work in 
Queen Squave—Moves to No. 21 Cheyne Walk—M. Harry's Impressions 
of the House—Portratt of the Comte de Montesquiou—W. E. Henley and 
“* National Observer ’’—New Friends 


CHAPTER XXXIV...“ THE GENTLE ART.” THE Vea Se iGe- 
TEEN NINETY 


Whistler Collects his Letters and Writings—Work begun by Mr. Sheridan 
Ford—Mr. J. McLure Hamilton’s Account—Action at Antwerp to sup- 
press Ford’s Edition—Mr. Heinemann publishes ‘‘ The Gentle Avi’ for 
Whistler—Summary of the Book—Period of unimportant Quarrels 


CHAPTER XXXV. THE TURN OF THE TIDE. THE YEARS 
EIGHTEEN NINETY-ONE AND EIGHTEEN NINETY-TWO 


The ‘‘ Carlyle’’ bought by the Glasgow Corporation— The Mother”’ 
bought for the Luxembourg—The Exhibition at the Goupil Gallery—Mr. 
D. Croal Thomson’s Account—Success of the Exhibition—T he Catalogue— 
Commissions—Demand for his Pictures—Mr. H. S. Theobald’s Reminis- 
cences—Whistler’s Indignation at Sale of Early Pictures by Old Friends— 
Invited to show in Chicago Exhibition—Not known at R.A.—Decorations 
for Boston Public Library 


CHAPTER XXXVI. PARIS. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN NINETY- 
TWO AND EIGHTEEN NINETY-THREE 


Whistler goes to Paris to live—Joseph Pennell with him there in 1892 and 
1893—Lithographs—Colour work—Studio in Rue Notre-Dame-des- 
Champs—A partment in the Rue du Bac—Eitchings printed—A fternoons in 
the Gavden—Day at Fontainebleau—Wills signed—Mr. E. G. Kennedy's 
Portrait—Rioting in the Latin Quarter. 


CHAPTER XXXVII. PARIS CONTINUED. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN 
NINETY-THREE AND EIGHTEEN NINETY-FOUR 


Whistler’s Friends in Paris—Mr. MacMonnies’, Mr. Walter Gay’s, and 
Mr. Alexander Harrison’s Reminiscences—Mr. A. J. Eddy’s Portrait 
—Portraits of Women begun 


CHAPTER XXXVIII. TRIALS AND GRIEFS. THE YEARS 
EIGHTEEN NINETY-FOUR TO EIGHTEEN NINETY-SIX 
Du Maurier’s “‘ Trilby ’’—A pology—Mrs. Whistler's Illness—The Eden 
Trial—Whistler Challenges George Moore—In Lyme Regis and London— 
Portraits in Lithography—Mr. S. R. Crockett’s Account of the Sittings for 
his Portrait—Mrs. Whistler’s Death—New Will 


XIV 


PAGE 


279 


288 


298 


310 


320 


3*7 


CoNTENTS 


CHAPTER XXXIX. ALONE. THE YEAR EIGHTEEN NINETY-SIX 


Work and Little Journeys—Mr. E. G. Kennedy’s Reminiscences—Even- 
ings with Whistler—Visit to the National Gallery—Whistler goes to live 
with Mr. Heinemann at Whitehall Court—Myr. Henry Savage Landor— 
Mr. Edmund Heinemann—Eden A ffair—Last Meeting with Sir Seymour 
Haden—Christmas at Bournemouth 


CHAPTER XL. THE LITHOGRAPH CASE. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN 
NINETY-SIX AND EIGHTEEN NINETY-SEVEN 


Mr. Walter Sickert’s Article in “‘ Saturday Review ’’—Joseph Pennell sues 
him for Libel—Whistler the Principal Witness—In the Witness-box under 
Gross-examination—Verdict—W histler’s Pleasure 


(Maribk ALI IHE END OF THE EDEN CASE. THE YEARS 
EIGHTEEN NINETY-SEVEN TO EIGHTEEN NINETY-NINE 


M. Boldini’s Portrait of Whistler—In London—Visits to Hampton— 
Journey to Dieppe—The Eden Case in the Cour de Cassation—Whistler’s 
Triumph—“ The Baronet and the Butterfly ’’—The Whistler Syndicate : 
Company of the Butterfly 


CHAPTER XLII. BETWEEN LONDON AND PARIS. THE YEARS 
EIGHTEEN NINETY-SEVEN TO NINETEEN HUNDRED 


Iliness in Pavis—Fever of Work—Portrait of Mr. George Vanderbili— 
Other Portraits and Models—Pictures of Children—Nudes—Pastels— 
Spanish War—Journey to Italy— Best Man” at Mr. Heinemann’s 
Wedding—Impressions of Rome—Mr. Kerr-Lawson’s Account of his Stay 
in Florvence—Winter in Paris—Loneliness—Meetings with old Student 
Friends—Dr. Whistler’s Death—Dinner at Mr. Heinemann’s—Mr. 
Arthur Symon’s Impressions of Whistler 


CHAPTER XLIII. THE INTERNATIONAL. THE YEARS EIGH- 
TEEN NINETY-SEVEN TO NINETEEN HUNDRED AND THREE 


The International Society of Sculptors, Painters, and Gravers—Whistler 
elected First President—Activity of his Intevest—Fuirst Exhibition at 
Knighisbridge—Second Exhibition—Difficulties—Third Exhibition at 
the Royal Institute—Exhibitions on the Continent and in America— 
Whistler's Presidency ends only with Death 


CHAPTER XLIV. THE ACADEMIE CARMEN. THE YEARS 
EIGHTEEN NINETY-EIGHT TO NINETEEN NUNDRED AND ONE 


School opened in the Passage Stanislas, Paris—Whistler and Mr. Frederick 
MacMonnies propose to visit it—History of the School written, at Whistler’s 
vequest, by Mrs. Clifford Addams—Her Account—His Methods—His 
Advice—His Palette—Misunderstandings—Mrs. Addams apprenticed to 
Whistler—Men’s Class discontinued—Third Year begins with Woman’s 
Class alone—School closed—Mr. Clifford Addams made an Apprentice— 
Mr. MacMonnies’ Account—Comparison with Other Art Schools 


PAGE 


330 


346 


35° 


so7 


369 


ord 


XV 


CoNTENTS 


CHAPTER XLV. THE BEGINNING OF THE END. THE YEAR 
NINETEEN HUNDRED 


Whistler authorises J. and E. R. Pennell to write his Life and Mr. 
Heinemann to publish it—Whistler gives his Reminiscences—Photo- 
graphing began in Studio—Paris Universal Exhibition—Interest in the 
Boer War—The “‘ Island ”’ and the “‘ Islanders ’’’—The Pekin Massacre 
and Blue Pots—Domberg—Visit to Iveland—Sir Walter Armstrong’s 
Reminiscences of Whistler in Dublin—Irritation with Critics of his 
Pictures in Paris—Increasing Ill-health in the Autumn—Serious Illness 
—Starts for the South 


CHAPTER XLVI. IN SEARCH” OF” HEALTH) TRE yreer 
NINETEEN HUNDRED AND ONE AND NINETEEN HUNDRED 
AND TWO 


Tangier—A lgiers—Marseilles—Ajaccio—Winter in Corsica—Visit from 
Mr. Heinemann—Dominoes—Rests for the First Time—Return to London 
in the Spring—Work in the Summer—lIIlness in the Autumn—Bath— 
No. 74 Cheyne Walk—Annoyances—J ourney to Holland—Dangerous Ill- 
ness in The Hague—Mr. G. Sauter’s Account of his Last Visit to Franz 
Hals at Haarlem 


CHAPTER XLVII. THE END. THE YEARS NINETEEN 
HUNDRED AND TWO AND NINETEEN HUNDRED AND THREE 


Return to No. 74 Cheyne Walk—Iliness—Gradual Decline—Work— 
Portraits—Prinis—Exhibition of Siluer—Degree of LL.D. from Glasgow 
University—St. Louis Exposition—Worries—Last Weeks—Death— 
Funeral—Grave 


APPENDIX 


INDEX 


Xv1 


PAGE 


393 


407 


423 


437 


439 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


G., after an etching, vefers to the Grolier Club Catalogue of Whistler’s 
Etchings, 1910 

W.., after a lithograph, refers to Mr. T. R. Way’s Catalogue of Whistler’s 
Lithographs, 1905 


PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST (By Himself) (Oil) Frontispiece 
In the George McCulloch Collection To face page 

PORTRAIT OF WHISTLER AS A Boy (By Sir William Boxall) (O11) 12 
In the Charles L. Freer Collection, National Gallery of American Art 

THE Two BrotuHErs (Miniature) 13 


Lent by Miss Emma Palmer: formerly in the possession of Mrs. George 
D. Stanton and Miss Emma W. Palmer 


Bipi LALOUETTE (Etching. G. 51) 20 

STREET AT SAVERNE (Efching. G. 19) 21 
From the “ French Set.”’ 

La MERE GERARD (Oi) 24 
In the possession of William Heinemann 

HEAD OF AN OLD MAN SMOKING (Oi) 25 
In the Musée du Luxembourg 

PORTRAIT OF WHISTLER (Etching. G. 54) 40 

SKETCHES OF THE JOURNEY TO ALSACE (Pen Drawings) 41 

PORTRAIT OF WHISTLER IN THE Bic Hat (O7%/) 44 
In the Charles L. Freer Collection, National Gallery of American Art 

DRovET (Etching. G. 55) 45 

AT THE PIANO (O7/) 52 
In the possession of Edmund Davis, Esq. 

WAPPING (O7/) 53 
In the possession of Mrs. Hutton 

THE THAMES IN IcE, THE TWENTY-FIFTH OF DECEMBER 1860 (O11) 60 
In the Charles L. Freer Collection, National Gallery of American Art 

ROTHERHITHE (Etching. G. 66) ; 61 

- From the “ Sixteen Etchings ”’ 

THE Music RooMm—HArRMONY IN GREEN AND ROSE (011) 68 
In the possession of Colonel F. Hecker | 

ANNIE HapDEN (Dry-Point. G. 62) 69 

THE WHITE GIRL—SYMPHONY IN WHITE, No. I. (O7z/) 76 


In the possession of J. H. Whittemore, Esq. 7" 
XV11 


List oF ILLUSTRATIONS 


Jo (Dry-Point. G. 77) 
THE BLUE WAVE (O1/) 
In the possession of A. A. Pope, Esq. 


THE ForGE (Dry-Point. G. 68) 
From the ‘‘ Sixteen Etchings ”’ 


THE MORNING BEFORE THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW (Wood- 


Engraving from “ Once a Week,” vol. vit. p. 210) 


THE Last oF OLD WESTMINSTER (O2/) 
In the possession of A. A. Pope, Esq. 


PORTRAIT OF WHISTLER (By Himself) (Chalk Drawing) 
Formerly in the possession of Thomas Way, Esq. 
WEARY (Dry-Point G. 92) 
STUDY IN CHALK FOR THE SAME 
Formerly in the possession of B. B. MacGeorge, Esq. 
THE LANGE LEIZEN OF THE SIX MARKS—PURPLE AND ROSE (O1I) 
In the J. G. Johnson Collection, Philadelphia 
THE BALCONY—HARMONY IN FLESH-COLOUR AND GREEN (011) 
In the Charles L. Freer Collection, National Gallery of American Art 


La PRINCESSE DU PAYS DE LA PORCELAINE—ROSE AND SILVER (Oil) - 
In the Charles L. Freer Collection, National Gallery of American Art 


VARIATIONS IN VIOLET AND GREEN (Oi1I) 
In the possession of Sir Charles McLaren, Bart. 


THE LITTLE WHITE GIRL—SYMPHONY IN WHITE, No. II. (Oz/) 
In the National Gallery, London 


PORTRAIT OF DR. WHISTLER (O1/) 
In the possession of Burton Mansfield, Esq. 
VALPARAISO BAY—NOcTURNE: BLUE AND GOLD (01) 
In the Charles L. Freer Collection, National Gallery of American Art 


SYMPHONY IN WHITE, No. III. (O7z/) 
In the possession of Edmund Davis, Esq. 


WHISTLER’S TABLE PALETTE (Photograph) 
In the possession of Mrs. Newmarch 


SEA BEACH WITH FicuREs (Study for the Six Projects) (Pastel) 


THE THREE FIGURES—PINK AND GREY (Oi/) 
In the possession of Alfred Chapman, Esq. 


NocTURNE—BLUE AND GREEN (O%/) 
In the National Gallery, London 


NocTURNE—BLUE AND SILVER (Oi/) 
In the possession of the Executors of Mrs, F. R. Leyland 
Xvill 


To face page 


77 
84 


85 
92 
93 
104 


105 


108 


109 


Il2 


113 


124 


125 


132 


133 


144 


144 


+145 


148 


149 


List oF ILLUSTRATIONS 
To face page 
THE MOTHER—ARRANGEMENT IN GREY AND BLACK (Oi/) 160 
In the Musée du Luxembourg 


PORTRAIT OF THOMAS CARLYLE—ARRANGEMENT IN GREY AND BLACK, 
No II. (Oi) 161 
In the Corporation Art Gallery, Glasgow 


PORTRAIT OF CICELY HENRIETTA, Miss ALEXANDER—HARMONY IN GREY 
AND GREEN (0Oi2/) 164 
In the National Gallery, London 


PORTRAIT OF F. R. LEYLAND—ARRANGEMENT IN BLAck (O1/) 165 
In the Charles L. Freer Collection, National Gallery of American Art 


PORTRAIT OF Mrs. F. R. LEYLAND—SYMPHONY IN FLESH-COLOUR AND 
PINK (Oz/) ize 
In the possession of H. C. Frick, Esq. 


PORTRAIT OF Miss LEYLAND (Pastel) 173 
In the possession of the Executors of Mrs. F. R. Leyland 

PorRTRAIT OF Mrs. Louis HUTH—ARRANGEMENT IN Brack, No. II. (Oz/) 180 
In the possession of the Executors of the Family 

Fanny LEYLAND (Study for the Etching. G. 108) (Pencil Sketch) 181 
Formerly in the possession of J. H. Wrenn, Esq. 

WHISTLER IN HIS STUDIO (O2/) 196 
In the Chicago Art Institute 

MAuD STANDING (Eéching. G. 114) 197 

PORTRAIT OF SIR HENRY IRVING AS PHILIP II. OF SPAIN—ARRANGEMENT 

IN Brack, No. III. (Oz) 200 

In the Metropolitan Museum, New York 

PORTRAIT OF SIR HENRY COLE (Oz/) (Destroyed) 201 


From a photograph lent by Pickford R. Waller, Esq. 
PoRTRAIT OF Miss Rosa CORDER—ARRANGEMENT IN BLACK AND BROWN 208 


(Out) 
In the possession of H. C. Frick, Esq. 


THE PEAcock Room (Photograph) 209 
In the Charles L. Freer Collection, National Gallery of American Art 


DRAWING IN WaAsH FoR ‘“‘ A CATALOGUE OF BLUE AND WHITE NANKIN 
PORCELAIN FORMING THE COLLECTION OF SIR HENRY THOMPSON.” 


Lonpon: ELLIs AND WHITE. 1878 216 
In the possession of Pickford R. Waller, Esq. 
Stupy (Lithotint. W. 2) 217 
From a print lent by T. R. Way, Esq. 
TALL BRIDGE (Lithograph. W. 9) 224 


From a print lent by T. R. Way, Esq. 


List oF ILLUSTRATIONS 


To face page 

NoctTurRn_E (Lithotint. W. 5) 225 
From ‘“‘ Notes’ published by Goupil 
From a print lent by T. R. Way, Esq. 

OLD BATTERSEA BRIDGE—NOCTURNE IN BLUE AND GOLD (01/) 232 
In the National Gallery of British Art, Tate Gallery 

THE FALLING RoCKET—NOCTURNE IN BLACK AND GOLD (Oi?/) 233 
In the possession of Mrs. S. Untermeyer 

THE BrivGE (Etching. G. 204) 244 
From the ‘‘ Second Venice Set ”’ 
By the permission of Messrs. Dowdeswell 

THE Doorway (Etching. G. 188) 245 
From the “‘ First Venice Set ”’ 
By the permission of the Fine Art Society 

THE Beccars (Etching. G. 194) 252 
From the ‘‘ First Venice Set ”’ 
By the permission of the Fine Art Society 

THE RiaTo (Eiching. G. 211) 253 
From the ‘‘ Second Venice Set ”’ 
By the permission of Messrs. Dowdeswell 

PORTRAITS OF Maup (Oz/) (Destroyed) 258 


From photographs lent by Pickford R. Waller, Esq. 


JUBILEE MEMORIAL FROM THE SOCIETY OF BRITISH ARTISTS TO QUEEN 
VicToRIA, 1887 (Illumination) 259 
In the Royal Collection at Windsor 


PoRTRAIT OF LaDy MEux—HARmony IN PINK AND GREY (O1/) 268 
In the possession of H. C. Frick, Esq. 


THE SALUTE, VENICE (Water-Colour) 269 
In the possession of B. B. MacGeorge, Esq. 


THE YELLOW BuSKIN—ARRANGEMENT IN BLACK (01/) 276 
In the Wilstach Collection, Memorial Hall, Philadelphia 


PoRTRAIT OF M. THEODORE DURET—ARRANGEMENT IN FLESH-COLOUR AND 
PINK (O1/) 277 
In the Metropolitan Museum, New York 


PORTRAIT OF PABLO SARASATE—ARRANGEMENT IN BLAck (O1/) 304 
In the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh 


PORTRAIT OF LADY COLIN CAMPBELL—HARMONY IN WHITE AND IvorRyY 


(O21) (Destroyed) 395 
From a photograph lent by Pickford R. Waller, Esq. 
ANNABEL LEE (Pastel) 312 


In the Charles L. Freer Collection, National Gallery of American Art 
xX 


List oF ILLUSTRATIONS 
THE CONVALESCENT (Water-Colour) 
In the possession of Dr. J. W. MacIntyre 


PORTRAIT OF Miss KINSELLA—-THE IRIS, ROSE AND GREEN (Oi/) 
In the possession of Miss Kinsella 


WHISTLER AT HIS PRINTING PRESS IN THE STUDIO, 
RuE NoTRE-DAME-DES-CHAMPS, PARIS 
From a photograph by M. Dornac 


ILLUSTRATION TO LITTLE JOHANNES 


PORTRAIT OF A LADY (Drawings on Wood) 
In the Pennell Collection, Library of Congress, Washington 


WATER-COLOUR LANDSCAPE 
Loaned by Mrs. Mortimer Menpes 


Tue Master Situ oF Lyme REcIts ((i/) 
In the Boston Museum of Fine Arts 


THE SMITH, PassaGE DU DraGon (Lithograph. W. 73) 
PorTRAIT OF Mrs. A. J. CASSATT 


THE Bracu (Waiter-Colour) 
In the possession of Mrs. Knowles 


SHOP WINDOW AT DIEPPE (Water-Colour) 
THE THAMES (Lithotint. W. 125) 


FIRELIGHT—JOSEPH PENNELL, No. I. (Lithograph. W. 104) 
From “ Lithography and Lithographers ”’ 
By the permission of T. Fisher Unwin, Esq. 


StTuDY IN Brown (07/) 
In the possession of the Baroness de Meyer 


STUDY OF THE NUDE (Pen Drawing) 
In the possession of William Heinemann, Esq. 


THE LITTLE BLUE BONNET—BLUE AND CORAL (Oi1I) 
Formerly in the possession of Wm. Heinemann, Esq. 


RosE AND GoLD—LITTLE LADY SOPHIE OF SOHO (Oi%/) 


To face page 
313 


328 


329 


336 


337 
340 


341 
344 
345 


345 
348 
349 
356 
S57 
360 


361 


In the Charles L. Freer Collection, National Gallery of American Art 


MoDEL WITH FLOWERS (Pastel) 
In the possession of J. P. Heseltine, Esq. 


GIRL WITH A RED FEATHER (011) 
In the possession of the Executors of J. Staats Forbes 


A FRESHENING BREEZE (O1I) 
In the possession of J. S. Ure, Esq. 


LILLIE IN OUR ALLEY—BROWN AND GOLD (O1/) 
In the possession of J. J. Cowan, Esq. 


368 


369 


376 


377 


XX1 


List or ILLUSTRATIONS 

To face page 

THE SEA, POURVILLE (Oi/) 388 
In the possession of A. A. Hannay, Esq. 


THE COAST OF BRITTANY—ALONE WITH THE TIDE (O7/) 388 
Formerly in the possession of Ross Winans, Esq. 


THE FuR JACKET—ARRANGEMENT IN BLACK AND BRowNnN (Oi) 389 
Picture in Progress : 
From a photograph lent by Pickford R. Waller, Esq. 
Completed Picture : 
In the Worcester Museum, Massachusetts 


PORTRAIT OF Mrs. WALTER SICKERT 404 
In the possession of Mrs. Cobden-Sanderson 

PORTRAIT OF Miss WOAKES 405 
In the possession of Messrs. Knoedler and Co. 

THE CHELSEA GIRL 416 

PoRTRAIT OF E. S. KENNEDY 417 
In the Metropolitan Museum, New York 

GALLERY AT THE LONDON MEMORIAL EXHIBITION 428 

GALLERY AT THE BosToN MEMORIAL EXHIBITION 428 


XXil 


CHAPTER I : THE WHISTLER FAMILY. THE YEARS 
EIGHTEEN THIRTY-FOUR TO EIGHTEEN FORTY-THREE. 


‘ James Asspotr McNeitt WuisTLER was born on July to, 1834, at 
Lowell, Massachusetts, in the United States of America. 

Whistler, in the witness-box during the suit he brought against 
Ruskin in 1878, gave St. Petersburg as his birthplace—or the reporters 
did—and he never denied it. Baltimore was given by M. Théodore 
Duret in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts (April 1881), and M. Duret’s 
mistake, since corrected by him, has been many times repeated. 
The late Mrs. Livermore, who knew Whistler as a child at Lowell, 
asked him why he did not contradict this. His answer was: “ If any 
one likes to think I was born in Baltimore, why should I deny it? 
It is of no consequence to me!”’ On entering West Point he stated 
that Massachusetts was his place of birth. But, as a rule, he met 
any one indiscreet enough to question him on the subject as he did 
the American who came up to him one evening in the Carlton Hotel, 
London, and by way of introduction said, “‘ You know, Mr. Whistler, 
we were both born at Lowell, and at very much the same time. There 
is only the difference of a year—you are sixty-seven and I am sixty- 
eight.” “And I told him,” said Whistler, from whom we had 
the story the next day, ‘“‘‘ Very charming! And so you are 
sixty-eight and were born at Lowell! Most interesting, no doubt, 
and as you please! But I shall be born when and where I want, 
and I do not choose to be born at Lowell, and I refuse to be sixty- 
seven’? 

Whistler was christened at St. Anne’s Church, Lowell, November 9, 
1834. ‘‘ Baptized, James Abbott, infant son of George Washington 
and Anna Mathilda Whistler: Sponsors, the parents. Signed, 
T. Edson ” ; so it is recorded in the church register. He was named 
after James Abbott, of Detroit, who had married his father’s elder 
sister, Sarah Whistler. McNeill (his mother’s name) was added 
shortly after he entered West Point. Abbott he always kept for 
legal and official documents. But, eventually, he dropped it for 
other purposes, “ J. A. M.” pleasing him no better than “ J. A. W.,” 
1834] A I 


James McNett WuisTLeR 


and he signed himself “ James McNeill Whistler” or “J. M. N. 
Whistler.” 

The Rev. Rose Fuller Whistler, in his Annals of an English Family 
(1887), says that John le Wistler de Westhannye (1272-1307) was the 
founder of the family. Most of the Whistlers lived in Goring, 
Whitchurch, or Oxford, and are buried in many a church and church- 
yard of the Thames Valley. Brasses and tablets to the memory of 
several are in the church of St. Mary at Goring: one to “ Hugh 
Whistler, the son of Master John Whistler of Goring, who departed 
this life the 17 Day of Januarie Anno Dominie 1675 being aged 216 
years ”—an amazing statement, but there it is in the parish church 
durable as brass can make it, and it would have delighted Whistler. 
The solemn antiquary, however, has decided that the 21 is only a badly 
cut 4. This remarkable ancestor figures as a family ghost at Gate- 
hampton, where he is said to have been buried with his money, and 
there he still walks, guarding the treasure he lived so many years to 
gather. The position of the Whistlers entitled them to a coat of 
arms, described in the Harleian MSS., No. 1556, and thus in Gwillim’s 
Heraldry: ‘ Gules, five mascles, in bend between two Talbots passant 
argent ”?; and the motto “ Forward.” 

The men were mostly soldiers and parsons. A few made names 
for themselves. The shield of Gabriel Whistler, of Combe, Sussex, 
is one of six in King’s College Chapel, Cambridge. Anthony Whistler, 
poet, friend of Shenstone, belonged to the Whitchurch family. Dr. 
Daniel Whistler (1619-1684), of the Essex branch, was a Fellow of 
Merton, an original Fellow of the Royal Society, a member and after- 
wards President of the College of Physicians, friend of Evelyn and 
Pepys. Evelyn often met him in “select companie” at supper, 
and once “.Din’d at Dr. Whistler’s at the Physicians Colledge,” and 
found him not only learned but “ the most facetious man in nature,” 
the legitimate ancestor of Whistler. Pepys, who also dined and 
supped with him many times, pronounced him “ good company and 
a very ingenious man.” He fell under a cloud with the officials of 
the College of Physicians, and his portrait has been consigned to a 
back stairway of the Hall in Pall Mall. In the seventeenth century 
Ralph Whistler, of the Salters’ Company, London, was one of the 
colonisers of Ulster, and Francis Whistler was a settler of Virginia. 
2 [1272-1684 


Tue WHISTLER FAMILY 


When Whistler saw the name “ Francis Whistler, Gentleman,” in 
the Genesis of the United States, he said to us, “ There is an ancestor, 
with the hall-mark F.F.V. [First Families of Virginia], who tickles 
my American snobbery, and washes out the taint of Lowell.” 

The American Whistlers are descended from John Whistler of the 
Irish branch. In his youth he ran away and enlisted, Sir Kensington 
Whistler, an English cousin, was an officer in the same regiment, and 
objected to having a relative in the ranks. John Whistler, therefore, 
was transferred to another regiment starting for the American colonies. 
He arrived in time to surrender at Saratoga with Burgoyne. He went 
back to England, received his discharge, eloped with Anna, daughter 
of Sir Edward Bishop or Bischopp, and, returning to America, settled 
at Hagerstown, Maryland. He again enlisted, this time in the United 
States army. He rose to the brevet rank of major and served in the 
war of 1812 against Great Britain. He was stationed at Fort Dear- 
born, which he helped to build, and Fort Wayne. According to 
Mr. A. J. Eddy (Recollections and Impressions of Whistler), Whistler 
once said to a visitor from Chicago : 

“‘ Chicago, dear me, what a wonderful place! I really ought to 
visit it some day; for, you know, my grandfather founded the city, 
and my uncle was the last commander of Fort Dearborn!” 

In 1815, upon the reduction of the army, Major John Whistler 
was retired. He died in 1817, at Bellefontaine, Missouri. Of his 
fifteen children, three sons are remembered as soldiers, and three 
daughters married army officers. George Washington, the most dis- 
tinguished son, was the father of James Abbott McNeill Whistler. 

George Washington Whistler was born on May 19, 1800, at Fort 
Wayne. He was educated mostly at Newport, Kentucky ; and from 
Kentucky, when a little over fourteen, he received his appointment 
to the Military Academy, West Point, where he is remembered for 
his gaiety. Mr. George L. Vose, his biographer, and others tell stories 
that might have been told of his son. One is of some breach of dis- 
cipline, for which he was made to bestride a gun on the campus. As 
he sat there he saw, coming towards him, the Miss Swift he was be- 
fore long to marry. Out came his handkerchief, and, leaning over 
the gun, he set to work cleaning it so carefully that he was “ honoured, 
not disgraced,” in her eyes. He was number one in drawing, and 
1684-1817] 3 


JAMES McNertt WHISTLER 


his playing on the flute won him the nickname “ Pipes.” He graduated 
on July 1, 1819. He was appointed second lieutenant in the First 
Artillery, and, in 1829, first lieutenant in the Second Artillery. He 
served on topographical duty, and for a few months he was assistant 
professor at the Academy. There was not much fighting for American 
officers of his generation. But railroads were being built, and so 
few were the civil engineers that West Point graduates were allowed 
by Government to work for private corporations, and he was em- 
ployed on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, the Baltimore and Susque- 
hanna, and the Paterson and Hudson River. For the Baltimore and 
Ohio he went to England in 1828 to examine the railway system. 
He was building the line from Stonington to Providence, when, in 
1833, he resigned from the army with the rank of major, to carry on 
his profession as a civil engineer. 

In the meanwhile Major Whistler had married twice. His first 
wife was Mary Swift, daughter of Dr. Foster Swift, of the United 
States army. She left three children: George, who became a well 
known civil engineer; Joseph, who died in youth; and Deborah, 
Lady Haden. His second wife was Anna Mathilda McNeill, daughter 
of Dr. Charles Donald McNeill, of Wilmington, North Carolina, and 
sister of William Gibbs McNeill, a West Point classmate and an asso- 
ciate in Major Whistler’s engineering work. The McNeills were 
descended from the McNeills of Skye. Their chief, Donald, emigrated 
with sixty of his clan to North Carolina in 1746, and bought land on 
Cape Fear River. Charles Donald McNeill was his grandson and was 
twice married; his second wife, Martha Kingsley, was the mother 
of Anna Mathilda McNeill, who became Mrs. George Washington 
Whistler. The McNeills were related by marriage to the Fairfaxes 
and other Virginia families, and Whistler, on his mother’s side, was 
the Southerner he loved to call himself. 

In 1834 Major Whistler accepted the post of engineer of locks and 
canals at Lowell, and to this town he brought his family. There, in 
the Paul Moody House on Worthen Street, James McNeill Whistler 
was born, and the house is now a Whistler Memorial Museum. Two 
years later the second son, William Gibbs McNeill, was born. In 
1837 Major Whistler moved to Stonington, Connecticut, and Miss 
Emma W. Palmer and Mrs. Dr. Stanton, his wife’s nieces, still re- 
4 [1819-1887 


THE WHISTLER FAMILY 


member his “ pleasant house on Main Street.” It is said that he had a 
chaise fitted with car wheels in which he and his family drove every 
Sunday on the tracks to church at Westerly ; also that a locomotive 
named Whistler was in use on the road until recently. He was con- 
sulted in regard to many new lines, among them the Western Railroad 
of Massachusetts, for which he was consulting engineer from 1836 to 
1840, In 1840 he was made chief engineer, and he removed to Spring- 
field, Massachusetts, where he lived in the Ethan Chapin Homestead 
on Chestnut Street, north of Edward Street. A third son, Kirk Booth, 
born at Stonington in 1838, died at Springfield in 1842, and here a 
fourth son, Charles Donald, was born in 1841. 

In 1842 Nicholas I. of Russia sent a commission, under Colonel 
Melnikoff, round Europe and America to find the best method and 
the best man to build a railroad from St. Petersburg to Moscow, and 
they chose the American, George Washington Whistler. The honour 
was great and the salary large, 12,000 dollars a year. He accepted, 
and started for Russia in Midsummer 1842, leaving his family at 
Stonington. 

The life of a child, for the first nine years or so, is not of much in- 
terest to any save his parents. An idea can be formed of Whistler’s 
early training. His father was a West Point man, with all that is fine 
in the West Point tradition. Mrs. Whistler, described as “ one of 
the saints upon earth,” was as strict as a Puritan. Dr. Whistler— 
Willie—often told his wife of the dread with which he and Jimmie 
looked forward to Saturday afternoon, with its overhauling of clothes, 
emptying of pockets, washing of heads, putting away of toys, and 
preparation for Sunday, when the Bible was the only book they read. 
Of the facts of his childhood there are few to record. Mrs. Liver- 
more remembered his baby beauty, so great that her father used to 
say “it was enough to make Sir Joshua Reynolds come out of his 
grave and paint Jemmie asleep.” In his younger years he was called 
Jimmie, Jemmie, Jamie, James, and Jim, and we use these names 
as we have found them in the letters written to us and the books 
quoted. Mrs. Livermore dwelt on the child’s beautiful hands, “ which 
belong to so many of the Whistlers.”” When she returned to Lowell 
in 1836 from the Manor School at York, England, Mrs. Whistler’s son, 
Willie, had just been born : 

1887-1842] 5 


James McNeitt WuIsTLEeR 


** As soon as Mrs. Whistler was strong enough, she sent for me to 
go and see her boy, and I did see her and her baby in bed! And 
then I asked, ‘ Where is Jemmie, of whom I have heard so much?’ 
She replied, ‘ He was in the room a short time since, and I think he 
must be here still.” So I went softly about the room till I saw a very 
small form prostrate and at full length on the shelf under the dressing- 
table, and I took hold of an arm and a leg and placed him on my knee, 
and then said, ‘ What were you doing, dear, under the table?’ ‘I’se 
drawrin’,’ and in one very beautiful little hand he held the pape in 
the apher the pencil.” 

The pencil drawings which we have seen, owned by Mrs. Livermore, 
are curiously firm and strong for a child of four. 


CHAPTER IT: IN RUSSIA. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN FORTY- 
THREE TO EIGHTEEN FORTY-NINE. 


In 1843, when Whistler was nine years old, Major Whistler sent for his 
wife and children. Mrs. Whistler sailed from Boston in the Arcadia, 
August 12, 1843, taking with her Deborah and the three boys, James, 
William, and Charles. George Whistler, Major Whistler’s eldest son, 
and her “‘ good maid Mary ” went with them. The story of their 
journey and their life in Russia is recorded in Mrs. Whistler’s journal. 

They arrived at Liverpool on the 29th of the same month. Mrs. 
Whistler’s two half-sisters, Mrs. William Winstanley and Miss Alicia 
McNeill, lived at Preston, and there they stayed a fortnight. Then, 
after a few days in London, they sailed for Hamburg. 

There was no railroad from Hamburg, so they drove by carriage 
to Ltibeck, by stage to Travemitinde, where they took the steamer 
Alexandra for St. Petersburg, and George Whistler left them. Be- 
tween Travemiinde and Cronstadt, Charles, the youngest child, fell ill 
of seasickness and died within a day. There was just time to bury 
him at Cronstadt—temporarily ; he was afterwards buried at Stoning- 
ton—and his death saddened the meeting between Major Whistler 
and his wife and children. 

Mrs. Whistler objected to hotels and to boarding, and: a house 
was found in the Galernaya. She did her best to make it not only 
6 [18438 


In Russia 


a comfortable, but an American home, for Major Whistler’s attachment 
to his native land, she said, was so strong as to be almost a religious 
sentiment. Their food was American, American holidays were kept 
in American fashion. Many of their friends were Americans. Major 
Whistler was nominally consulting engineer to Colonel Melnikoff, but 
actually in charge of the construction and equipment of the line, and 
as the material was supplied by the firm of Winans of Baltimore, 
Mr. Winans and his partners, Messrs. Harrison and Eastwick, of 
Philadelphia, were in Russia with their families. 

Mrs. Whistler’s strictness did not mean opposition to pleasure. 
Yet at times she became afraid that her boys were not “ keeping to 
the straight and narrow way.” ‘There were evenings of illuminations 
that put off bedtime; there were afternoons of skating and coasting ; 
Christmas gaieties, with Christmas dinners of roast turkey and pumpkin 
pie; visits to American friends; parties at home, when the two 
boys “ behaved like gentlemen, and their father commended them 
upon it”; there were presents of guns from the father, returning 
from long absences on the road; there were dancing lessons, which 
Jemmie would have done anything rather than miss. 

Whistler as a boy was exactly what those who knew him as a man 
would expect ; gay and bright, absorbed in his work when that work 
was art, brave and fearless, selfish if selfishness is another name for 
ambition, considerate and kindly, above all to his mother. The boy, 
like the man, was delightful to those who understood him ; “ startling,” 
“¢ alarming,” to those who did not. 

_ Mrs. Whistler’s journal soon becomes extremely interesting : 

March 29 (1844). “I must not omit recording our visiting the 
Gastinnoi to-day in anticipation of Palm Sunday. Our two boys 
were most excited, Jemmie’s animation roused the wonder of many, 
for even in crowds here such decorum and gravity prevails that it must 
be surprising when there is any ebullition of joy.” 

April 22 (1844). ‘‘ Jemmie is confined to his bed with a mustard 
plaster on his throat; he has been very poorly since the thawing 
season commenced, soon becoming overheated, takes cold; when he 
complained of pain first in his shoulder, then in his side, my fears of 
a return of last year’s attack made me tremble, and when I gaze upon 
his pale face sleeping, contrasted to Willie’s round cheeks, my heart 
1844] ; 


James McNeritu WuisTLerR 


is full; our dear James said to me the other day, so touchingly, ‘ Oh, 
I am sorry the Emperor ever asked father to come to Russia, but if I 
had the boys here, I should not feel so impatient to get back to Stoning- 
ton,’ yet I cannot think the climate here affects his health; Willie 
never was as stout in his native land, and James looks better than 
when we brought him here. At eight o’clock I am often at my reading 
or sewing without a candle, and I cannot persuade James to put up 
his drawing and go to bed while it is light.” 

The journal explains that Whistler as a boy suffered from severe 
rheumatic attacks that added to the weakness of his heart, the eventual 
cause of his death. Major and Mrs. Whistler rented a country-house 
on the Peterhoff Road in the spring of 1844. There is an account of 
a day at Tsarskoé Seléd, when Colonel Todd, American Minister to 
Russia, showed them the Palace : 

May 6 (1844). ‘‘ Rode to the station, and took the cars upon the 
only railroad in Russia, which took us the twenty versts to the pretty 
town. It would be ungenerous in me to remark how inferior the 
railroad, cars, &c., seemed to us Americans. The boys were delighted 
with it all. Jemmie wished he could stay to examine the fine pictures 
and know who painted them, but as I returned through the grounds 
I asked him if he should wish to be a grand duke and own it all for 
playgrounds: he decided there could be no freedom with a footman 
at his heels.” 

Fuly 1 (1844). “... 1 went with Willie to do some shopping 
in the Nevski. He is rather less excitable than Jemmie, and therefore 
more tractable. They each can make their wants known in Russ., 
but I prefer this gentlest of my dear boys to go with me. We had 
hardly reached home when a tremendous shower came up, and Jemmie 
and a friend, who had been out in a boat on a canal at the end of our 
avenue, got well drenched. Just as we were seated at tea, a carriage 
drove up and Mr. Miller entered, introducing Sir William Allen, the 
great Scotch artist, of whom we have heard lately, who has come 
to St. Petersburg to revive on canvas some of the most striking events 
from the life of Peter the Great. They had been to the monastery 
to listen to the chanting at vespers in the Greek chapel. Mr. Miller 
congratulated his companion on being in the nick of time for our 
excellent home-made bread and fresh butter, but, above all, the re- 
8 [1844 


In Russia 


freshment of a good cup of tea. His chat then turned upon the sub- 
ject of Sir William Allen’s painting of Peter the Great teaching the 
mujiks to make ships. This made Jemmie’s eyes express so much 
interest that his love for art was discovered, and Sir William must 
needs see his attempts. When my boys had said good night, the 
great artist remarked to me, ‘ Your little boy has uncommon genius, 
but do not urge him beyond his inclination.’ I told him his gift had 
only been cultivated as an amusement, and that I was obliged to 
interfere, or his application would confine him more than we ap- 
proved.” 

Of these attempts there remain few examples. One is the portrait 
of his aunt Alicia McNeill, who visited them in Russia in 1844, sent 
to Mrs. Palmer at Stonington, with the inscription: “ James to Aunt 
Kate.” In a letter to Mrs. Livermore, written in French, when he 
was ten or eleven, “‘ he enclosed some pretty pen-and-ink drawings, 
each on a separate bit of paper, and each surrounded by a frame of his 
own designing.” He told us he could remember wonderful things 
he had done during the years in Russia. Once, he said, when on a 
holiday in London with his father, he was not well, and was given a 
hot foot-bath, and he could never forget how he sat looking at his foot, 
and then got paper and colours and set to work to make a study of it, 
“‘ and in Russia,” he added, ‘‘ I was always doing that sort of thing.” 

fuly 4 (1844). “I have given my boys holiday to celebrate the 
Independence of their country. ... This morning Jemmie began 
relating anecdotes from the life of Charles XII. of Sweden, and rather 

upbraided me that I could not let him do as that monarch had done 
- at seven years old—manage a horse! I should have been at a loss 
how to afford my boys a holiday, with a military parade to-day, but 
there was an encampment of cadets, about two estates off, and they 
went with Colonel T.’s sons to see them.” 

Fuly 10 (1844). “A poem selected by my daring Jamie and put 
under my plate at the breakfast-table, as a surprise on his tenth birth- 
day. I shall copy it, that he may be reminded of his happy childhood 
when perhaps his grateful mother is not with him.” 

August 20 (1844). “. .. Jemmie is writing a note to his Swedish 
tutor on his birthday. Jemmie loves him sincerely and gratefully. 
I suppose his partiality to this Swede makes him espouse his country’s 
1844] 9 


James McNett WuiIsTLeR 


cause and admire the qualities of Charles XII. so greatly to the pre- 
judice of Peter the Great. He has been quite enthusiastic while reading 
the life of this King of Sweden, this summer, and too willing to excuse 
his errors.” 

August 23 (1844). ‘‘I wish I could describe the gardens at Peter- 
hoff where we were invited to drive to-day. The fountains are, perhaps, 
the finest in the world. The water descends in sheets over steps, all 
the heathen deities presiding. Jemmie was delighted with the figure 
of Samson tearing open the jaws of the lion, from which ascends a 
jet d'eau one hundred feet. ... There are some fine pictures, but 
Peter’s own paintings of the feathered race ought to be most highly 
prized, though our Jemmie was so saucy as to laugh at them.” 

August 28 (1844). “I avail myself of Col. Todd’s invitation 
to visit Tsarskoé Selé to-day with Aunt Alicia, Deborah, and the 
two dear boys, who are always so delighted at these little excursions. 
. . . My little Jemmie’s heart was made sad by discovering swords 
which had been taken in the battle between Peter and Charles XII., 
for he knew, from their rich hilts set in pearls and precious stones, 
that they must have belonged to noble Swedes. ‘ Oh!’ he exclaimed, 
‘ I’d rather have one of these than all the other things in the armoury ! 
How beautiful they are!’ ... I was somewhat annoyed that Col. 
Todd had deemed it necessary to have a dinner party for us. 

“*.. . The colonel proposed the Emperor’s health in champagne, 
which not even the Russian general, who declined wine, could refuse, 
and even I put my glass to my lips, which so encouraged my little 
boys that they presented their glasses to be filled, and, forgetting at 
their little side-tables the guests at ours, called out aloud, ‘ Santé a 
?Empereur!? The captain clapped his hands with delight, and after- 
wards addressed them in French. All at the table laughed and called 
the boys ‘ Bons sujets.’ ” 

They were at St. Petersburg again in September, preparing their 
Christmas gifts for America. Whistler, sending one to his cousin 
Amos Palmer, wrote in an outburst of patriotism that “ the English 
were going to America to be licked by the Yankees ”: it was at the 
time of the disagreement over Oregon Territory. In another letter he 
gives the Fourth of July as his birthday. 

Ash Wednesday (1845). ‘“‘I avail myself of this Lenten season 
10 [1844-5 


In Russta 


to have my boys every morning before breakfast recite a verse from 
the Psalms, and I, who wish to encourage them, am ready with my 
response. How very thankful I shall be when the weather moderates 
so that Jemmie’s long imprisonment may end, and Willie have his dear 
brother with him in the skating grounds and ice-hills. Here comes 
my good boy Jemmie now, with his history in hand to read to me, 
as he does every afternoon, as we fear they may lose their own language 
in other tongues, and thus I gain a half-hour’s enjoyment by hearing 
them read daily.” 

April § (1845). ‘Our boys have left the breakfast table before 
eight o’clock to trundle their new hoops on the Quai with their governess, 
and have brought home such bright red cheeks and buoyant spirits to 
enter the schoolroom with and to gladden my eyes. Jemmie began 
his course of drawing lessons at the Academy of Fine Arts just on the 
opposite side of the Neva, exactly fronting my bedroom window. He 
is entered at the second room. There are two higher, and he fears he 
shall not reach them, because the officer who is still to continue his 
private lesson at home is a pupil himself in the highest, and Jemmie 
looks up to him with all the reverence an artist merits. He seems 
greatly to enjoy going to his class, and yesterday had to go by the 
bridge on account of the ice, and felt very important when he told 
me he had to give the Isvdéshtclék fifteen copecks silver instead of 
ten? 

In the archives of the Imperial Academy of Science there is a 
“List of Scholars of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts,” and in 
this and the “‘ Class Journal of the Inspector ” for 1845 James Whistler 
is entered as “‘ belonging to the drawing class, heads from Nature.” 
In 1846 he was on March 2 examined and passed as first in his class, 
the number being twenty-eight. From 1845 to 1849 Professors 
Vistelious and Voivov were the masters of the life class. 

On May 14 (1845) there was a review of troops in St. Petersburg, 
and the Whistlers saw it from a window in the Prince of Oldenburg’s 
palace. 

“ Jemmie’s eagerness to attain all his desires for information and 
his fearlessness often makes him offend, and it makes him appear less 
amiable than he really is. The officers, however, seemed to find amuse- 
ment in his remarks in French or English as they accosted him. They 
1845] II 


James McNertit WHuIsTLER 


were soon informed of his military ardour, and that he hoped to serve 
his country. England? No, indeed! Russia, then? No, no; 
America, of course ! ” | 

May 2 (1846). “ The boys are in the schoolroom now, reading the 
Roman history in French to M. Lamartine, promising themselves the 
pleasure of reviewing the pictures at the Academy of Fine Arts at 
noon, which they have enjoyed almost every day this week. It is 
the Triennial Exhibition, and we like them to become familiar with 
the subjects of the modern artists, and to James especially it is the 
greatest treat we could offer. I went last Wednesday with Whistler 
and was highly gratified. I should like to take some of the Russian 
scenes so faithfully portrayed to show in my native land. My James 
had described a boy’s portrait said to be Azs likeness, and although the 
eyes were black and the curls darker, we found it so like him that his 
father said he would be glad to buy it, but its frame would only corre- 
spond with the furniture of a palace. The boy is taken in a white 
shirt with crimped frill, open at the throat; it is half-length, and no 
other garment could show off the glow of the brunette complexion so 
finely.” 

May 30 (1846). ‘* Yesterday the Empress was welcomed back 
to St. Petersburg. Last night the illumination which my boys had 
been eagerly expecting took place. When at 10.30 they came in, 
Jamie expressed such an eager desire that I would allow him to be my 
escort just to take a peep at the Nevski that I could not deny him. 
The effect of the light from Vasili Ostrow was very beautiful, and as 
we drove along the Quai, the flowers and decorations of large mansions 
were, I thought, even more tasteful. We had to fall into a line of 
carriages in the Isaac Square to enter that Broadway, and just then 
a shout from the populace announced to us that the Empress was 
passing. I was terrified lest the poles of their carriage should run into 
our backs, or that some horses might take fright or bite us, we were 
so close, but Jamie laughed heartily and aloud at my timidity. He 
behaved like a man. With one arm he guarded me, and with the 
other kept the animals at a proper distance; and, I must confess, 
brilliant as the spectacle was, my great pleasure was derived from the 
conduct of my dear and manly boy.” 

Fuly 7 (1846). “My two boys found much amusement in pro- 
12 [1846 


PORTRAIT OF WHISELER AS A’ BOY 


By Sir William Boxall 
In the Charles L. Freer Collection, National Gallery of American Art 


(See page 18) 


THE TWO BROTHERS. MINIATURE 


Lent by Miss Emma Palmer : 


Formerly in the possession of Mrs. George D. Stanton and 
Miss Emma W. Palmer 


Artist unknown 


(See page 19) 


In Russia 


pelling themselves on the drawbridge to and from the fancy island in 
the pond at Mrs. G.’s, where we went to spend the day; they find it 
such a treat to be in the country, and just run wild, chasing butterflies 
and picking the wild flowers so abundant. But nothing gave them so 
much pleasure as their 4th July, spent with their little American friends 
at Alexandrovsky, the Eastwicks; the fireworks, percussion caps, 
muskets, horseback riding, &c., made them think it the most delightful 
place in Russia. In some way James caught cold, and his throat was 
so inflamed that leeches were applied, and he has been in consequence 
confined to his room. . . . We spend our mornings in reading, draw- 
ing, &c. Then the boys take their row with good John across the Neva, 
to the morning bath, and in the cool of the afternoon a drive to the 
island, or a range in the summer gardens, or a row on the river.” 

Fuly 27 (1846). ‘‘ Last Wednesday they had another long day 
in the country, and got themselves into much mischief. They had 
at last broken the ropes of the drawbridge, by which it was drawn to 
and from the island, and there were my wild boys prisoners on it. I 
thought it best for them to remain so, as they were so unruly, but 
the good-natured dominie was pressed into their service, and swimming 
to their rescue, ere I could interfere; Jemmie was so drenched by 
his efforts that dear Mrs. R. took him away to her room to coax him to 
lie down awhile and to rub him dry, lest his sore throat return to tell 
a tale of disobedience. 

«¢., . On Thursday there was another grand celebration of the 
birthday of the Grand Duchess Olga. I gladly gave Mary permission 
to take the boys in our carriage. . . . They were gone so long that 
I grew anxious about them, but finally they arrived very tired, and 
poor Mary said she never wanted to go in such a crowd again. James 
had protected her as well as he was able, but she was glad to get home 
safely. The boys, however, enjoyed it immensely, as they saw all the 
Imperial family within arm’s length, as they alighted from their pony 
chaises to enter the New Palace. . . . We were invited to go to the 
New Palace, and went immediately to the apartment occupied by his 
lamented daughter. On one side is the lovely picture painted by 
Buloff, so like her in life and health, though taken after death, as repre- 
senting her spirit passing upwards to the palace above the blue sky. 
She wears her Imperial robes, with a crown on her head; at the back 
1846] 13 


James McNeitt WuisTLER 


of the crown is a halo of glory—the stars surround her as she passes 
through them. No wonder James should have thought this picture 
the most interesting of all the works of art around-us.” 

In the autumn of 1846 Major Whistler “‘ placed the boys, as boarders, 
at M. Jourdan’s school. My dear boys almost daily exchange billet- 
doux with mother, since their absence of a week at a time from home. 
James reported everything ‘ first-rate,’ even to brown bread and salt 
for breakfast, and greens for dinner, and both forbore to speak of 
homesickness, and welcome, indeed, were they on their first Saturday 
at home, when they opened the front door and called ‘ Mother, 
Mother!’ as they rushed in all in a glow, and they looked almost 
handsome in their new round black cloth caps, set to one side of their 
cropped heads, and the tight school uniform of grey trousers and 
black jacket makes them appear taller and straighter; Jamie found 
the new suit too tight for his drawing lesson, so he sacrificed vanity 
to comfort, and was not diverted from his two hours’ drawing by 
the other boys’ frolics, which argues well for his determination to 
improve, as he promised his father. How I enjoyed having them 
back and listening to all their chat about their school—they seemed 
to enjoy their nice home tea. When it came time for them to go back, 
Willie broke down and told me all he had suffered from homesickness, 
and when I talked to my more manly James, I unfortunately said, 
‘You do not know what he feels.’ Then Jamie’s wounded love melted 
him into tears, as he said, ‘Oh! mother, you think I don’t miss being 
away from home!’ He brushed away the shower with the back of 
his hand as if he was afraid of being seen weeping. Dear boys, may 
they never miss me as I miss them! ” 

Shortly after this, Mrs. Whistler’s youngest son, John Bouttatz, 
born in the summer of 1845, died. 

November 14 (1846). “ Jamie was kept in until night last Saturday, 
and made to write a given portion of French over twenty-five times 
as a punishment for stopping to talk to a classmate after their recita- 
tion, instead of marching back to his seat according to order—poor 
fellow, it was rather severe when he had looked only for rewards during 
the week; as he had not had one mark of disapprobation in all that 
time, and was so much elated by his number of good balls for perfect 
recitations tha the forgot disobedience of orders is a capital offence 
14 [1846 


In Russia 


under military discipline. He lost his drawing lesson, and made us all 
unhappy at home. We tried to keep his dinner hot, but his appetite 
had forsaken him, although only having eaten a penny roll since break- 
fast—he dashed the tears of vexation from his eyes at losing his drawing 
lesson, but his cheerfulness was soon restored and we had our usual 
pleasant evening.” 

January 23 (1847). “It is three weeks this afternoon since the 
dear boys came home from school to spend the Russian Christmas 
and holidays, and it seems not probable that they shall return again 
to M. Jourdan’s this winter. James was drooping from the close 
confinement, and for two days was confined to his bed. Then Willie 
was taken. They are quite recovered now, and skate almost daily 
on the Neva, and Jamie often crosses on the ice to the Academy of 
Fine Arts to spend an hour or two.” 

Fanuary 30 (1847). “ Jamie was taken ill with a rheumatic attack 
soon after this, and I have had my hands full, for he has suffered 
much with pain and weariness, but he is gradually convalescing, and 
to-day he was able to walk across the floor; he has been allowed to 
amuse himself with his pencil, while I read to him; he has not taken 
a dose of medicine during the attack, but great care was necessary in 
his diet.” ; 

February 27 (1847). “‘ Never shall I cease to record with deep 
gratitude dear Jamie’s unmurmuring submission these last six weeks. 
He still cannot wear jacket or trousers, as the blistering still continues 
on his chest. What a blessing is such a contented temper as his, so 
grateful for every kindness, and rarely complains. He is now enjoying 
a huge volume of Hogarth’s engravings, so famous in the Gallery of 
Artists. We put the immense book on the bed, and draw the great 
easy-chair close up, so that he can feast upon it without fatigue. He 
said, while so engaged yesterday, ‘ Oh, how I wish I were well; I want 
so to show these engravings to my drawing-master ; it is not everyone 
who has a chance of seeing Hogarth’s own engravings of his originals,’ 
and then added, in his own happy way, ‘and if I had not been ill, 
mother, perhaps no one would have thought of showing them to 
me.’ 99 
From this time until his death, Whistler maintained that Hogarth 
was the greatest English artist, and never lost an opportunity of saying 
1847] 15 


JAMES McNeEitt WHISTLER 


so. His long illness in 1847 is therefore memorable as the beginning 
of his love of Hogarth and also as a proof of his early appreciation of 
great art. Curiously, in his mother’s diary there is no mention of the 
Hermitage, nor in his talks with us did he ever refer to it and to the 
pictures there by Velasquez, the artist he later grew to admire so 
enormously. 

March 23 (1847). ‘‘ After many postponements, the Emperor 
finally inspected the Railroad . . . and many of the Court were in- 
vited. The day after his visit . . . the Court held a Jevée, my husband 
was invited ; when he arrived was summoned to a private audience in 
an inner apartment; the Emperor met him with marked kindness, 
kissed him on each side his face, and hung an ornament suspended by a 
scarlet ribbon around his neck, saying the Emperor thus conferred upon 
him the Order of St. Anne. Whistler, as such honours are new to 
Republicans, was somewhat abashed, but when he returned with the 
Court to the large circle in the outer room, he was congratulated by 
the officers generally.” 

It is said that when Major Whistler was asked to wear the Russian 
uniform he refused. The decoration he could not decline. 

Whistler told us that the Emperor was most impressed with the 
way his father met every difficulty. When Major Whistler asked the 
Czar how the line should be built, showing him the map of the country 
between St. Petersburg and Moscow, the Czar, as everybody now 
knows, took a ruler, drew a straight line from one city to the other, 
and the railroad follows that ruled line. But everybody does not know 
that when the rolling stock was ready it was found to have been made 
of a different gauge from the rails. The people who supplied it de- 
manded to be paid. Major Whistler not only refused, but burnt it, 
and took the responsibility. } 

Mrs. Whistler and the three children spent the summer of 1847 
in England, where Major Whistler joined them. They visited their 
relations, and before their return Deborah was married. She had met 
Seymour Haden, a young surgeon, while staying with friends, the 
Chapmans, at Preston. 

October 10 (1847). “‘ Deborah’s wedding day. Bright and pleasant. 
James the only groomsman, and very proud of the honour.” 

The next summer (1848) Mrs. Whistler went back to England. 
16 [1847-8 


In Russia 


Jamie had had another of his bad attacks of rheumatic fever, cholera 
broke out in St. Petersburg; “‘ at its very name,” she wrote, “ my heart 
failed me.” On July 6 she left for London with her boys. Jamie 
was better, and anxious to make a portrait of a young Hindu aboard. 

July 22 (1848). ‘ Shanklin, Isle of Wight. This is Willie’s twelfth 
birthday and has been devoted to his pleasure ; poor Jamie was envious 
that he could not bathe with us in the beautiful summer sea, for the 
doctors think the bracing air as much as he can bear; we three had a 
seaside ramble and then returned to rest at our cottage. I plied the 
needle, while my boys amused themselves, Willie in making wax flowers 
and Jemmie in drawing.” 

Monday [no date]. “This day being especially fine, Mrs. P. took 
the boys on a pedestrian excursion along the shore to Culver Cliffs. 
In the hope that Jamie might finish his sketch of Cook’s Castle, we 
started the next day after an early dinner, taking a donkey with us 
for fear of fatigue for James or Deborah. . . . We availed ourselves 
of a lovely bright morning to take a drive, said to be the most charming 
in England, along the south coast of the Isle as far as ‘ Black Gang 
Chine,’ where we alighted at the inn. Jamie flew off like a sea-fowl, 
his sketch-book in hand, and when I finally found him, he was seated 
on the red sandy beach, down, down, down, where it was with difficulty 
Willie and I followed him. He was attempting the sketch of the 
waterfall and cavern up the side of the precipice ; he came back later, 
glowing with the exercise of climbing, with sketch-book in hand, and 
laughing at being ‘ Jacky last,’ as we were all assembled for our drive 
back.” 

James did not return with Mrs. Whistler. It was feared his health 
would not stand another Russian winter. He stayed with the Hadens 
at 62 Sloane Street, and studied with a clergyman who had one other 
pupil. It was then that Boxall, commissioned by Major Whistler, 
painted his portrait, ‘‘ when he was fourteen years old,” Mrs. Thynne, 
his niece, says. 

Mr. Alan S. Cole, C.B., recalls that ‘‘ Whistler, as early as 1849, was 
staying with the Hadens in Sloane Street, and went to one or two 
children’s parties given by the old Dilkes. To these also went my 
elder sisters and Miss Thackeray and so met Jimmy. Seymour 
Haden was our family doctor—with whose family ours was intimate— 
1848-9] B 17 


JAMEs McNEeEILL WHISTLER 


very much on account of the early relations between my father, his 
brothers, and Seymour Haden, dating from schooldays at Christ’s 
Hospital.” . 

Major Whistler, through the summer of 1848, continued his work, 
though cholera raged. In November he was attacked. He recovered, 
but his health was shaken: he overtaxed his strength, and on April 9, 
1849, he died: the immediate cause heart trouble, which his son 
inherited. He had been employed or consulted also in the building 
of the iron roof of the Riding House at St. Petersburg and the iron 
bridge over the Neva, in the improvement of the Dvina at Archangel, 
and the fortifications, the arsenal, and the docks at Cronstadt. He 
was buried in Evergreen Cemetery, Stonington, with three of his sons, 
and a monument was erected to his memory by his fellow officers in 
Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn. 

The Emperor suggested, Whistler told us, that the boys should 
be educated in the school for Court pages. But Mrs. Whistler deter- 
mined to take them home, and the Emperor sent her in his State 
barge to the Baltic. She went to the Hadens, where she found James 
grown tall and strong. In London they forgot for a moment their 
sorrow in their visit to the Royal Academy (1849), in Trafalgar Square, 
where Boxall’s portrait of James was exhibited. A short visit to 
Preston followed, the two boys carried off by “kind Aunt Alicia ” 
to Edinburgh and Glasgow, and then they met in Liverpool. Economy 
made Mrs. Whistler hesitate between steamer and sailing-packet, but, 
by the advice of George Whistler, she took the steamer America, 
July 29, 1849, for New York, where they arrived on August 9, at once 
going by boat to Stonington. 


CHAPTER III: SCHOOLDAYS IN POMFRET. THE YEARS 
EIGHTEEN FORTY-NINE TO EIGHTEEN FIFTY-ONE. 


“Tur boys were brought up like little princes until their father’s 
death, which changed everything,” Miss Emma W. Palmer writes 
us. Major Whistler’s salary was large, so were his expenses; we 
have never heard there was a pension. He left his family compara- 
tively poor—fifteen hundred dollars a year. 

18 [1849 


ScHOOLDAYS IN PoMFRET 


Mrs. Whistler would have preferred to stay at Stonington, but 
for her two sons’ sake she went to Pomfret, Connecticut, where there 
was a good school, Christ Church Hall. The principal was Rev. Dr. 
Roswell Park, a West Point engineer before he became parson and school 
teacher. At Pomfret Mrs. Whistler made herself a home. She could 
only afford part of an old farmhouse, and she felt keenly the discomfort 
for her boys. Yet she kept up the old discipline. On Christmas Day 
she wrote to her mother that they had been busy all morning bringing 
in wood and listing draughty doors, though she allowed them to lighten 
their task by hanging up evergreens and to sweeten it with “ Stuart’s 
Candy.” After a snowstorm, they had, like other boys, to shovel 
paths, and all the while they had to study. ‘“‘ Jimmie was still an 
excitable spirit with little perseverance,” she wrote; however, she 
would not faint but labour, and ‘“‘I urged them on daily, and could 
see already their exertions to overcome habits of indolence.”” The 
Bible was read and the two boys were made to recite a verse every 
morning before breakfast. Miss Palmer, their schoolmate, during 
the winter of 1850, remembers that Mrs. Whistler “‘ was very strict 
with them,” and describes Whistler at this period as “ tall and slight, 
with a pensive, delicate face, shaded by soft brown curls, one lock of 
which fell over his forehead. . . . He had a somewhat foreign ap- 
pearance and manner, which, aided by his natural abilities, made him 
very charming even at that age. . . . He was one of the sweetest, 
loveliest boys I ever met, and was a great favourite.” 

The deepest impression he left at Pomfret was as a draughtsman. 
He made caricatures and illustrations to the books he read, portraits 
of his friends, and landscapes. Many of his sketches have been pre- 
served. The late Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton, also one of his school- 
mates, describes him as ‘‘a man as fascinating as he was great, with a 
charm which from the very beginning everyone who knew him recog- 
nised.”” Whistler told us that he used to walk to school with her, 
carrying her books and basket, and she wrote us : 

“‘ He was very attentive and kind; full of fun in those days. The 
master of the school—Rev. Dr. Roswell Park—was one of the stiffest 
and most precise of clergymen, and dressed the part. One day Whistler 
came to school with a high, stiff collar and a tie precisely copied from 
Dr. Park’s. Of course, the schoolroom was full of suppressed laughter. 
1850] 19 


James McNeitut WuisTLER 


The reverend gentleman was very angry, but he could hardly take 
open notice of an offence of that sort. So he bottled up his wrath, 
but when Jimmy—as we used to call him in those schooldays—gave 
him some trifling cause of offence, the Rev. Dr. went for him with a 
ferrule. The school was in two divisions—the girls sitting on one side 
of the large hall, and the boys on the other. Jimmy, pursued by the 
Dr. and the ferrule, went round back of the girls’ row, and threw 
himself down on the floor, and the Dr. followed him and whacked 
him, more, I think, to Jimmy’s amusement than to his discomfort.” 

Mrs. Moulton had further recollections of the maps he drew, which 
‘* were at once the pride and the envy of all the rest of us—they were 
so perfect, so delicate, so exquisitely dainty in workmanship.” 

The work done at Pomfret by Whistler which we have seen does 
not strike us as remarkable. It has its historic importance, but shows 
no greater evidence of genius than the early work of any great artist. , 


CHAPTER IV: WEST POINT. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN FIFTY- 
ONE TO EIGHTEEN FIFTY-FOUR. 


Tuoucu Whistler’s mother was proud of his drawing, she did not 
see In art a career for him. She thought he had inherited a profes- 
sion more distinguished. Many Whistlers and McNeills had been 
soldiers. West Point had made of them men—Americans. West 
Point must do the same for him. Through the influence of George 
Whistler with Daniel Webster, he was appointed cadet At Large by 
President Fillmore, and on July 1, 1851, after two years at Pomfret 
school, within ten days of his seventeenth birthday, he entered the 
United States Military Academy, West Point, where Colonel Robert 
E. Lee was Commandant. Whistler was not made for the army any 
more than Giotto for Tuscan pastures, or Corot for a Paris bonnet shop. 
It was inevitable that he should fail. Yet his three years at West 
Point were an experience he would not have missed. 

The record sent to us from West Point by Colonel C. W. Larned 
is: ‘‘ He entered July 1, 1851, under the name of James A. Whistler ; 
aged sixteen years and eleven months. He was appointed At Large. 
. . . At the end of his second year, in 1853, he was absent with leave 
20 [1851 


(See page 38) 


BIBI LALOUETTE 


ETCHING. G. 51 


see 


sence 


Bae ee eee eee 


A 


i 


tars 


hg 
iis 


$j 


em <aet, 
ee BBE 
Bn Oe ee 


« 

meRetiiog, ee Hy 

agin foe ap 
eae 


ate A tase BE 
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STREET AT SAVERNE 


ETCHING. G, 19 
(See page 43) 


West Point 


on account of ill-health. On June 16, 1854, he was discharged from 
the Academy for deficiency in chemistry. At that time he stood at 
the head of his class in drawing and No. 39 in philosophy, the total 
number in the class being 43.” 

The Professor of Drawing was Robert W. Weir. Mr. J. Alden 
Weir, his son, remembers, “‘ as a boy, my father showing me his work, 
which at that time hung in what was known as the Gallery of the 
Drawing Academy. There were about ten works by him framed. 
From the start he showed evidences of a talent which later proved 
to be unique se those fine and rare qualities hard to be pon chts toon by 
the majority.” 

Brigadier-General Alexander S$. Webb, one of Whistler’s classmates, 
says: “ In the art class one day, while Whistler was busy over an India- 
ink drawing of a French peasant girl, Weir walked, as usual, from desk 
to desk, examining the pupil’s work. After looking over Whistler’s 
shoulder he stepped back to his own desk, filled his brush with India- 
ink [General Webb says he can see him now, rubbing the colour on 
the slab], and approached Whistler with a view to correcting some of 
the lines in the latter’s drawing. When Whistler saw him coming, 
he raised his hands as if to ward off the strokes of his brush, and called 
out, ‘Oh, don’t, sir, don’t! You'll spoil it!’ ” 

Mr. William M. Chase told the story to Whistler and asked if there 
was any truthinit. ‘* Well, you know he would have ! ” said Whistler. 

Colonel Larned writes us: “I have here two drawings made by 
Whistler in his course of instruction: in drawing, one of which is a 
water-colour copy of a coloured print, without special merit, and much 
touched up by Professor Weir, as was his wont ; another, a pen-and- 
ink copy also of a colour print, quite brilliant and masterful in execu- 
tion, which I presented to the officers’ mess. The colour sketch bears 
the ear-marks all over it of Weir’s retouching. It was his habit to 
touch up all water-colours of the cadets for the examination exhi- 
bition, and I don’t believe Whistler at that time had any such facility 
in colour work as is indicated in this drawing. With my knowledge 
of my predecessor’s practice, which we instructors follow to the best 
of our ability, I have always been suspicious of its integrity. At the 
same time Whistler was head in drawing, and it may be that Weir 
forbore in his case. The pen-and-ink, however, must have been his 
1851] 21 


JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER 


own interpretation of a colour lithograph, and shows such facility 
that it makes me hesitate. 

“‘ Whistler did another water-colour of a monk seated at a table 
by a window writing. This is also a copy of an old print which was 
used by Weir through successive classes. I think it was who saw 
the thing and wrote a lot of tommy-rot and hi-falutin about it and 
Whistler’s satiric genius, and his introduction in the monk’s face of 
that of his room-mate, assuming it to have been an original production. 
As a matter of fact I have copies of the same thing by cadets in the 
gallery, all touched up by Weir, and I fancy about as good as 
Whistler’s.” 

Of these West Point drawings, copies probably of lithographs by 
Nash or Haghe, only the pen drawing gives any promise. The water- 
colour is worthless. The pen drawing has in it the beginning of the 
handling of his etchings. Five drawings, four of 4n Hour tn the Life of 
a Cadet in pen-and-ink, and one of 4n Encampment in wash, have lately 
been found at West Point. The cadet drawings are far the best of his 
early work that we have seen. The Century Magazine published 
(March 1910) a lithograph, called The Song of the Graduates, said to be 
by Whistler. It is evident, however, that if Whistler did make the 
sketch, it was re-drawn by a professional lithographer at Sarony’s, 
who printed it. The Century also published (September 1910) a wood- 
engraving of some class function for which he is given the credit as 
draughtsman and engraver. But the work is that of a professional 
wood-engraver and could not have been done by Whistler at any period 
of his life. The attribution of these published prints to him is altogether 
unjustified. 

Of his other studies there is little to record. This is Colonel Larned’s 
account of his failure in chemistry: ‘“‘ Whistler said: ‘ Had silicon 
been a gas, I would have been a major-general.’ He was called up 
for examination in chemistry . . . and given silicon to discuss. He 
began: ‘I am required to discuss the subject of silicon. Silicon is a 
gas.” ‘That will do, Mr. Whistler,’ and he retired quickly to private 
life.” 

According to Colonel Larned, Whistler then appealed to General 
Lee, but Lee answered, “ I can only regret that one so capable of doing 
well should so have neglected himself, and must suffer the penalty.” 
22 [1851 


West Point 


Another story is of an examination in history. ‘“‘ What!” said 
his examiner, “‘ you do not know the date of the battle of Buena Vista ? 
Suppose you were to go out to dinner, and the company began to talk 
of the Mexican War, and you, a West Point man, were asked the date 
of the battle, what would you do?” “ Do,” said Whistler, “ why, I 
should refuse to associate with people who could talk of such things 
at dinner!” | 

Whistler’s horsemanship was little better. It was not unusual, 
General Webb says, for him at cavalry drill to go sliding over his horse’s 
head, Then Major Sackett, the commander, would call out: ‘ Mr. 
Whistler, aren’t you a little ahead of the squad?” Whistler said to us 
Major Sackett’s remark was: ‘‘ Mr. Whistler, I am pleased to see you 
for once at the head of your class!” ‘ But I did it gracefully,” he 
insisted. There are traditions of his fall when trotting in his first 
mounted drill, and the astonishment of the dragoon who ran to carry 
him off to hospital, when he rose unhurt with the complaint that he 
didn’t “‘ see how any man could keep a horse for amusement.” Once 
Whistler had to ride a horse called “‘ Quaker.” ‘‘ Dragoon, what horse 
is this ? ” “ ‘ Quaker,’ ” said the soldier. ‘‘ Well, he’s no friend ! ” said 
Whistler. 

His observance of the regulations was often as bad as his horseman- 
ship, and his excuses worse. General Ruggles, a classmate, tells of 
the discovery of a pair of boots which were against the regulations, 
and of his writing a long explanation, winding up with the argument 
that, as this demerit added but a little to the whole number, ‘‘ what 
boots it ?” 

General Langdon writes us: ‘“ The widow of a Colonel Thompson 
occupied a set of officer’s quarters at the ‘ Point,’ and, to eke out her 
pension, was allowed to take ten or twelve cadets to board. Very 
soon after his admission to the Academy Whistler discovered that 
the fare of the cadets was not of his taste, and he applied for per- 
mission to take his meals at Mrs. Thompson’s. Now, though her house 
was in the row of officers’ quarters and the nearest to the cadet bar- 
racks, it was ‘ off cadet limits,’ except for the boarders at meals. One 
evening, long after supper, Whistler was discovered by Mrs. Thompson, 
leaning over her fence, talking with her pretty French maid, Mrs. 
Thompson inquired his business there. Whistler replied: ‘I am 
1851] 23 


James McNEILu WHISTLER 


looking for my cat!’ It was well known that cadets were not allowed 
to keep cats, dogs, or other beasts. The old lady nearly had a fit. 
As soon as she could recover she gasped out: ‘ Young man, go ’way !” 
and sent her pretty maid indoors. Of course, Whistler took no more 
meals at Mrs. Thompson’s, but in the mess hall, where the fare in those 
days was far from inviting.” 

Whistler told Sir Rennell Rodd another story: ‘‘ The cadets were 
out early one morning, engaged in surveying. It was cold and raw, 
and Jimmy, finding a line of deep ditch through which he could make 
a retiring movement, got back into college and his warm quarters 
unperceived. By accident a roll-call was held that morning. Cadet 
Whistler not being present, a report was drawn up and his name was 
sent to the commanding officer as absent from parade without the 
knowledge or permission of his instructor. The report was shown him, 
and he said to the instructor: ‘ Have I your permission to speak ? ” 
‘Speak on, Cadet Whistler.’ ‘ You have reported me, sir, for being 
absent from parade without the knowledge or permission of my in- 
structor. Well, now, if I was absent without your knowledge or 
permission, how did you know I was absent?’ ‘They got into terms 
after that, and the incident closed.” 

The stories of Whistler at West Point might be multiplied. Many 
have been published. The few we tell show that at the Military 
Academy, as everywhere, he left his mark. We have a stronger proof 
in the letters written to us by officers who were his fellow cadets. 
It is half a century since they and Whistler were together, and, with 
one exception, they never saw him in later years, yet their memory of 
him is fresh. General D. McN. Gregg and General C. B. Comstock, 
his classmates, General Loomis L. Langdon, General Henry L. Abbott, 
General Oliver Otis Howard, General G. W. C. Lee, in the class before 
his, have sent us their recollections. These distinguished officers agree 
in their affection and their appreciation of him. He was “ a vivacious 
and likeable little fellow,” General Comstock says, and we get a picture 
of him, short and slight, not over military in his bearing, somewhat _ 
foreign in appearance, near-sighted, and with thick, black curls that 
won him the name of “ Curly.”” Others remember his wit, his pranks, 
his fondness for cooking and the excellence of his dishes ; his excur- 
sions “‘ after taps,” for buckwheat cakes and oysters or ice-cream and 
24. : [1852 


hale 


LA MERE GERARD 
OIL 


In the possession of William Heinemann, Esq. 
(See page 39) 


ie Fae 
ct, > 
co SEN Is 


HEAD OF AN OLD MAN SMOKING 
OIL 


In the Musée du Luxembourg 


(See page 52) 


West Point 


soda-water to Joe’s, and, for heavier fare, to Benny Haven’s a mile 
away, a serious offence ; they remember his indifference to discipline, 
and the number of his demerits, which they excuse as “ not indicating 
any moral obliquity,” but due to such harmless faults as “lates,” 
“absences,” ‘ clothing out of order”; most of all, they remember 
his drawings—his caricatures of the cadets, the Board of Visitors, 
the masters, his sketches scribbled over his text-books, his illustrations 
to Dickens, Dumas, Victor Hugo. General Langdon recalls a picture 
that he and Whistler painted together. Whistler gave these drawings 
away, and many have been preserved. Even the cover of a geometry 
book, on which he sketched and noted bets with General Webb, was 
kept by his room-mate, Frederick L. Childs—Les Enfants, Whistler 
called him. 

Whistler looked back to West Point with equal affection. He 
failed, but West Point was the basis of his code of conduct. As a 
“West Point man” he met every emergency, and his bearing, his 
carriage, showed the influence of those days when he liked to look back 
to himself “‘ very dandy in grey.” For the discipline, the tradition, 
the tone of the Academy he never lost his respect. He knew what it 
could do in making men of boys. ‘ From the moment we came,” 
he said to us, “we were United States officers, not schoolboys, not 
college students. We were ruled, not by little school or college rules, 
but by our honour, by our deference to the unwritten law of tradition.” 
He resented the least innovation that threatened the hold of this 
tradition over the cadets. ‘‘ To take a cadet into court was destruction 
to the morale of West Point ; it was such a disgrace to offend against 
the unwritten laws that the offender’s career was ruined.’ In the 
most trivial matters he deplored deviation from the old standard. 
That was the reason of his indignation when he heard that cadets 
were playing football, and, worse, playing against college teams ; 
to put themselves on the level of students “ was beneath the dignity 
of officers of the United States.” During our war with Spain, and the 
Boers’ struggle in South Africa, there was not an event, not a rumour, 
that he did not refer to West Point and its code. The Spanish War, 
though, “no doubt, we should never have gone into it, was the most 
wonderful, the most beautiful war since Louis XIV. Never in modern 
times has there been such a war; it was.conducted on correct West 
1853] 25 


James McNett WuisTLER 


Point principles, with the most perfect courtesy and dignity on both 
sides, and the greatest chivalry.”” When he came back to London from 
Corsica in 1901, and was telling us of the people and the way they clung 
to old custom and ceremonial, he said that he had found “ the Roman 
tradition almost as fine as the West Point tradition,” and this was a 
concession. We never knew him to show the least desire to return 
to Lowell or Stonington, to Pomfret or Washington, but he said, “ If 
I ever make the journey to America, I will go straight to Baltimore, 
then to West Point, and then sail for England again.” One evening 
we asked him to meet an officer just from West Point. His interest 
could not have been keener, had he left the Academy the day before. 
He wanted to know about everything—the buildings, the life, the 
discipline. He deplored every innovation, always, above all, football : 
West Point to him was in danger when cadets could stoop to dispute 
“‘ with college students for a dirty ball kicked round a muddy field.” 
This was the shadow thrown over his pleasure when he heard of the 
pride the Academy took in claiming him, of his reputation there, of 
his drawings hanging in places of honour. It was the military side 
of the Academy, however, that stirred him to enthusiasm. His face 
fell when, asking the officer, who, like Major Whistler, was in the 
artillery, “‘ Professor of Tactics, I suppose ? ” the officer answered, “‘ No, 
of French.” He showed his affection for the Military Academy by 
sending to the library a copy of Whistler v. Ruskin: Art and Art 
Critics, with autograph notes and on the title-page the inscription : 
“From an old cadet whose pride it is to remember his West Point 
days.” This is signed with the butterfly, and newspaper cuttings 
about the trial are pasted at the end of the book. The authorities at 
West Point have honoured him by placing a memorial tablet, one of. 
St. Gaudens’ last works, in the library of the Academy, and at the 
suggestion of the late Major Zalinski, a number of American artists 
have given a series of works to the Academy in his honour. In this 
collection Whistler alone is not represented, we believe. 

But it needs more than respect and love for the Military Academy 
to make a soldier, and Whistler, like Poe before him, was an alien at 
West Point. It was no question of the number of his demerits, or 
of his ignorance of chemistry and history; he had something else to 
do in life. 

26 [1854 


Tue Coast SuRVEY 


CHAPTER V: THE COAST SURVEY. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN 
FIFTY-FOUR AND EIGHTEEN FIFTY-FIVE. 


Wuew Whistler left West Point in 1854 he had not only to face the 
disappointment of his mother, but to find another career. The plan 
now was to apprentice him to Mr. Winans, in the locomotive works 
at Baltimore. 

Mr. Frederick B. Miles writes us: “It was in 1854 that I first 
met Whistler in Baltimore, after he left West Point, at the house of 
Thomas Winans, who had returned from Russia. I was apprenticed 
to the loco. works of old Mr. Ross Winans, Thomas Winan’s father. 
His elder brother, George Whistler, was a friend of my family; had 
been superintendent of the New York and New Haven Railroad, and 
had married Miss Julia Winans, sister of Thomas Winans, then came 
into the loco. works as partner and superintendent. I was in the 
drawing-room under him. 

“Whistler was staying with Tom Winans or his brother, George 
Whistler. They were perplexed at his ‘ flightiness —wanted him to 
enter the loco. works. His younger brother William was an apprentice 
along with me. But Jem never really worked. He spent much of his 
several short stays and two long ones in Baltimore loitering about 
the drawing-office and shops, and at my drawing-desk in Tom Winans’ 
_ house. We all had boards with paper, carefully stretched, which Jem 
would cover with sketches, to our great disgust, obliging us to stretch 
fresh ones, but we loved him all the same. He would also ruin all 
our best pencils, sketching not only on the paper, but also on the 
smoothly finished wooden backs of the drawing-boards, which, I think, 
he preferred to the paper side. We kept some of the sketches for a long 
time. I had a beauty—a cavalier in a dungeon cell, with one small 
window high up. In all his work at that time he was very Rembrandt- 
esque, but, of course, only amateurish. Nevertheless he was studying 
and working out effects.” 

Whistler saw enough of the locomotive works to know that he did 
not want to be an apprentice, and it was not long before he left Balti- 
more for Washington. Tous he spoke as if he had gone to Washington 
straight from West Point. He was with us on the evening of Septem- 
ber 15, 1900, after the news had come from the Transvaal of President 
1854] a 


James McNertt WHIsTLER 


Kruger’s flight, and our talking of it led him back to West Point, and so 
to the story of his days in the service of the Government. He followed 
the Boer War with intense interest : 

‘“‘' The Boers are as fine as the Southerners—their fighting would be 
no discredit to West Point,” and he was indignant with us for looking 
upon Kruger’s flight as diplomatically a blunder. “ Diplomatically 
it was right, you know, the one thing Kruger should have done, just 
as, in that other amazing campaign, flight had been the one thing 
for Jefferson Davis, a Southern gentleman who had the code. I shall 
always remember the courtesy shown me by Jefferson Davis, through 
whom I got my appointment in the Coast Survey. 

“It was after my little difference with the Professor of Chemistry 
at West Point. The Professor would not agree with me that silicon 
was a gas, but declared it was a metal; and as we could come to no 
agreement in the matter, it was suggested—all in the most courteous 
and correct West Point way—that perhaps I had better leave the 
Academy. Well, you know, it was not a moment for the return of 
the prodigal to his family or for any slaying of fatted calves. I had 
to work, and I went to Washington. There I called at once on Jeffer- 
son Davis, who was Secretary of War—a West Point man like myself. 
He was most charming, and ]—well, from my Russian cradle, I had an 
idea of things, and the interview was in every way correct, conducted on 
both sides with the utmost dignity and elegance. I explained my un- 
fortunate difference with the Professor of Chemistry—represented that 
the question was one of no vital importance, while on all really im- 
portant questions I had carried off more than the necessary marks. 
My explanation made, I suggested that I should be reinstated at West 
Point, in which case, as far as I was concerned, silicon should remain 
a metal. The Secretary, courteous to the end, promised to consider 
the matter, and named a day for a second interview. 

“‘ Before I went back to the Secretary of War, I called on the 
Secretary of the Navy, also a Southerner, James C. Dobbin, of South 
Carolina, suggesting that I should have an appointment in the Navy. 
The Secretary objected that I was too young. In the confidence of 
youth, I said age should be no objection; I ‘ could be entered at the 
Naval Academy, and the three years at West Point could count at 
Annapolis.’ The Secretary was interested, for he, too, had a sense of 
28 [1854 


Tue Coast SuRVEY 


things. He regretted, with gravity, the impossibility. But some- 
thing impressed him ; for, later, he reserved one of six appointments 
he had to make in the marines and offered it tome. In the meantime, 
I had returned to the Secretary of War, who had decided that it was 
impossible to meet my wishes in the matter of West Point ; West Point 
discipline had to be observed, and if one cadet were reinstated, a dozen 
others who had tumbled out after me would have to be reinstated 
too. But if I would call on Captain Benham, of the Coast Survey, 
a post might be waiting for me there.” 

Captain Benham was a friend of his father, and Whistler was en- 
gaged in the drawing division of the United States Coast and Geodetic 
Survey, at the salary of a dollar anda halfaday. This appointment he 
received on November 7, 1854, six months after he had left West Point. 
There was nothing to appeal to him in the routine of the office. What 
he had to do he did, but with no enthusiasm. 

“I was apt to be late, I was so busy socially. I lived in a small 
room, but it was amazing how I was asked and went everywhere—to 
balls, to the Legations, to all that was going on. lLabouchere, an 
attaché at the British Legation, has never ceased to talk of me, so gay, 
and, when I had not a dress suit, pinning up the tails of my frock-coat, 
and turning it into a dress-coat for the occasion. Shocking!” 

Mr. Labouchere has told this story in a letter tous: “ I did know 
Whistler very well in America about fifty years ago. But he was 
then a young man at Washington, who—if I remember rightly—had 
not been able to pass his examination at West Point and had given 
no indication of his future fame. He was rather hard up, I take it, for 
I remember that he pinned back the skirt of a frock-coat to make it 
pass as a dress-coat at evening parties. Washington was then a small 
place compared with what it is now, where everybody—so to say— 
knew everybody, and the social parties were of a simple character. 
This is really all that I remember of Whistler at that time, except 
that he was thought witty and paradoxically amusing ! ” 

But long before something in his dress drew attention to him. 
Though he was never seen in the high-standing collar and silk hat 
of the time, some remember him in a Scotch cap and a plaid shawl 
thrown over his shoulder, then the fashion; others recall a slouch 
hat and cloak, his coat, unbuttoned, showing his waistcoat; while 
1854] 29 


James McNeitt WHuIsTLER 


traditions of his social charm come from every side. Adjutant-General 
Breck is responsible for the story of Whistler having invited the Russian 
Minister—others say the Chargé d’Affaires—Edward de Stoeckl, to 
dine with him, carrying the Minister off in his own carriage, doing the 
marketing by the way, and cooking the dinner before his guest in the 
room where he lived. And it has been said that never was the Minister 
entertained by so brilliant a host while in Washington. 

Mr. John Ross Key, a fellow draughtsman in the Coast Survey, 
says that this room was in a house in Thirteenth Street, near Penn- 
sylvania Avenue, and that Whistler usually dined in a restaurant close 
by, kept by a Mr. and Mrs. A. Gautier. According to the late A. 
Lindenkohl, another fellow draughtsman, Whistler also lived for a while 
in a house at the north-east corner of E. and Twelfth Streets, a two- 
storey brick building which has lately been pulled down. He occupied 
a plainly but comfortably furnished room, for which he paid ten dollars 
a month. The office records show that he worked six and one-half 
days in January, and five and three-fourths in February. He usually 
arrived late, but, he would say, it was not his fault. ‘“‘ I was not too 
late; the office opened too early.”” Lindenkohl described an effort to 
reform him : 

“¢ Captain Benham took occasion to tell me that he felt great interest 
in the young man, not only on account of his talents, but also on account 
of his father, and he told me that he would be highly pleased 1f I could 
induce Whistler to be more regular in his attendance. ‘Call at his 
lodgings on your way to the office,’ he said, ‘ and see if you can’t bring 
him along.’ 

“ Accordingly, one morning, I called at Whistler’s lodgings at 
half-past eight. No doubt he felt somewhat astonished, but received 
me with the greatest bonhomie, invited me to make myself at home, 
and promised to make all possible haste to comply with my wishes. 
Nevertheless he proceeded with the greatest deliberation to rise from 
his couch and put himself into shape for the street and prepare his 
breakfast, which consisted of a cup of strong coffee brewed in a steam- 
tight French machine, then a novelty, and also insisted upon treating 
me with a cup. We made no extra haste on our way to the office, 
which we reached about half-past ten—an hour and a half after time. 
I did not repeat the experiment.” 

30 [1854 


THE Coast SuRVEY 


Lindenkohl said that Whistler spoke of Paris with enthusiasm, that 
he sketched sometimes from the office windows, and made studies of 
people, taking the greatest interest in the arrangement and folds of 
their clothes. Whistler showed him “ several examples done with the 
hrush in sepia, in old French or Spanish styles,” whatever this may 
mean. Mr. Key describes Whistler as “ painfully near-sighted,” and 
always sketching, even on the walls as he went downstairs. Though 
in Washington only a few months, he left the impression of his in- 
difference to work except in the one form in which work interested 
him—his art. 

If nothing else were known of this period, it would be memorable 
for the technical instruction he received in the Coast Survey. His 
work was the drawing and etching of Government topographical plans 
and maps, which have to be made with the utmost accuracy and sharp- 
ness of line. His training, therefore, was in the hardest and most 
perfect school of etching in the world, a fact never until now pointed 
out. The work was dull, mechanical, and he sometimes relieved the 
dullness by filling empty spaces on the plates with sketches. Captain 
Benham told him plainly, Whistler said, that he was not there to spoil 
Government coppers, and ordered all the designs to be immediately 
erased. This was Whistler’s account to us. But Mr. Key, in his 
Recollections of Whistler, published in the Century Magazine (April 1908) 
says that these sketches were confined to the experimental plate given 
to Whistler, as to all beginners, and he adds that he watched Whistler 
through the process of preparing and etching it. 

Only two plates have been as yet, or probably ever will be, found 
in the office that can be attributed, wholly or in part, to Whistler : 
the Coast Survey, No. 1, and Coast Survey No. 2, Anacapa Island, first 
described in the Catalogue of the Whistler Memorial Exhibition in 
London, 1905. The Coast Survey, No. 1 is a plate giving two parallel 
views, one above the other, of the coast-line of a rocky shore, the lower 
showing a small town in a deep bay with, below them both to the ex- 
treme left, a profile map. Whistler was unable to confine himself to 
the Government requirements. In the lower design, chimneys are 
gaily smoking, and on the upper part of the plate several figures, 
obviously reminiscent of prints and drawings, are sketched: an old 
peasant woman ; a man ina tall Italian hat, or, Mr. Key says, Whistler 
1854] 31 


James McNett WuisTLeR 


himself as a Spanish hidalgo; another in a Sicilian bonnet ; a mother 
and child in an oval, meant for Mrs. Partington and Ike, as Mr. Key 
remembers; a battered French soldier; a bearded monk in a cowl. 
The drawing is schoolboy-like, though it shows certain observation, 
but the biting is remarkable. The little figures are bitten as well and in 
the same way as La Vieille aux Loques, etched three or four years 
afterwards; to look at them is to know that Whistler was a consum- 
mate etcher technically before he left the Coast Survey. There is no 
advance in the biting of the French series. So astonishing is this 
mastery that, if the technique in some of the French plates were not 
similar, one would be tempted to doubt whether Whistler etched those 
little figures in Washington, especially as the plate is unsigned. The 
plate escaped by chance. Mr. Key, to whom it was given to clean off 
and use again, asked to keep it, and it was sold to him for the price 
of old copper. It is still in existence. 

The second plate, Anacapa Island, is signed with several names. 
Whistler etched the view of the eastern extremity of the island, for 
many lines on the rocky shore resemble the work in the French series, 
and also the two flights of birds which, though they enliven the design, 
have no topographical value. This plate was finished and published 
in the Report of the Superintendent of the Coast Survey, 1855. There 
is said to be a third plate, a chart of the Delaware River, but we have 
never seen it and can find out nothing about it. 

One other record of Whistler at the Coast Survey remains, but of 
a different kind. He liked to tell the story. Captain Benham used 
to come and look through the small magnifying glass each draughtsman 
in this department had to work with. One day, Whistler etched a 
little devil on the glass, and Captain Benham looked through it at the 
plate. Whistler described himself to us, lying full length on a sort of 
mattress or trestle, so as not to touch the copper. But he saw Captain 
Benham give a jump. The captain said nothing. He pocketed the © 
glass, and that was all Whistler heard of it until many years afterwards, 
when, one day, an old gentleman appeared at his studio in Paris, and 
by way of introduction took from his watch-chain a tiny magnifying 
glass, and asked Whistler to look Hegel” it—“ and,” he wai “ well— 
we recognised each other perfectly.” 

Captain Benham is dead, but his son, Major H. H. Benham, writes 
32 [1855 


SrupENT Days 1n THE Latin QUARTER 


us: “I have heard my father tell the story. He was very fond of 
Whistler, and thought most highly of his great ability—or rather 
genius, I should say.” 

Genius like Whistler’s served him as little at the Coast Survey as 
at West Point. He resigned in February 1855. His brother, George 
Whistler, and Mr. Winans tried again to make him enter the locomo- 
tive works in Baltimore. He was twenty-one, old enough to insist 
upon what he wanted, and what he wanted was to study art. Already 
at St. Petersburg his ability had struck his mother’s friends. At 
Pomfret and West Point he owed to his drawing whatever distinction 
he had attained. And there had been things done outside of school 
and Academy and office work, he told us—“ portraits of my cousin 
Annie Denny and of Tom Winans, and many paintings at Stonington 
that Stonington people remembered so well they looked me up in 
Paris afterwards. Indeed, all the while, ever since my Russian days, 
there had been always the thought of art, and when at last I told the 
family that I was going to Paris, they said nothing. There was no diffi- 
culty. They just got mea ticket. I was to have three hundred and 
fifty dollars (seventy pounds) a year, and my stepbrother, George 
Whistler, who was one of my guardians, sent it to me after that every 
quarter.” | 


CHAPTER VI: STUDENT DAYS IN THE LATIN QUARTER. 
THE YEARS EIGHTEEN FIFTY-FIVE TO EIGHTEEN FIFTY- 
NINE. 


WHISTLER arrived in Paris in the summer of 1855. There he fell 
among friends. The American Legation was open to the son of Major 
Whistler. It was the year of the first International Exhibition, and 
Sir Henry Cole, the British Commissioner, the Thackerays, and the 
Hadens were there. Lady Ritchie (Miss Thackeray) writes : 

“T wish I had a great deal more to tell you about Whistler. I 
always enjoyed talking to him when we were both hobbledehoys at 
Paris; he used to ask me to dance, and rather to my disappointment 
perhaps, for, much as I liked talking to him, I preferred dancing, we 
used to stand out while the rest of the party polkaed and waltzed by. 
1855] Cc 33 


James McNeritt WHIsTLER 


There was a certain definite authority in the things he said, even as 
a boy. I can’t remember what they were, but I somehow realised 
that what he said mattered. When I heard afterwards of his fanciful 
freaks and quirks, I could not fit them in with my impression of the 
wise young oracle of my own age.” 

George Whistler wanted him to go to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, 
but there is no record of his having been admitted. He went instead 
to the studio Gleyre inherited from Delaroche and handed on to 
Géréme, which drew to it all the students who did not crowd to 
Couture and Ary Scheffer. It was not extraordinary, as some have 
said, that Whistler should have gone there; it would have been extra- 
ordinary had he stayed away. He arrived in Paris when Courbet, 
slighted at the International, was defying convention with his first show 
and his first “‘ Manifesto,”’ and many of the younger men were throwing 
over Romanticism for Realism. Whistler found himself more in 
sympathy with the followers of Courbet than with Gleyre’s pupils, 
and he became so intimate with the group, among whom were Fantin 
and Degas, who studied under Lecocq de Boisbaudran, that it is some- 
times thought he must have worked in that school. But on his arrival 
in Paris the young American had heard neither of Lecocq de Bois- 
baudran nor Courbet, and Gleyre was the popular teacher. Fantin- 
Latour and M. Duret both have said that they seldom heard Whistler 
speak of Gleyre’s. When we asked him about it, he only recalled 
the dignified principles upon which it was conducted. There was not 
even the case of the nouveau. “If a man was a decent fellow, and 
would sing his song, and take a little chaff, he had no trouble.” Whistler 
could remember only one disagreeable incident, in connection, not 
with a nouveau, but an unpopular student, who had been there some 
time and put on airs. One morning, Whistler told us, he came to 
the studio late, “‘ and there were all the students working away very 
hard, the unpopular one among them, and there, at the end of the 
room, on the model’s stand was an enormous catafalque, the un- 
popular one’s name on it in big letters. And no one said a word. 
But that killed him. He was never again seen in the place.” 

Gleyre was by no means colourless as a teacher. He is remembered 
as the successor of David and the Classicists, but he held theories 
disquieting to academic minds. He taught that before a picture was 
34 [1855 


StupEnT Days 1n THE LATIN QUARTER 


begun the colours should be arranged on the palette: in this way, 
he said, difficulties were overcome, for attention could be given solely 
to the drawing and modelling on canvas in colour. He taught also 
that ivory-black is the base of tone. Upon this preparation of the 
palette and this base of black—upon black, “‘ the universal harmoniser ” 
—Whistler founded his practice as painter, and as teacher when he 
visited the pupils of the Académie Carmen.* As he has told us over 
and over again, his practice of a lifetime was derived from what he 
learned in the schools, and the master’s methods he never abandoned. 
He only developed methods, misunderstood by those British prophets 
who have said he had but enough knowledge for his own needs. 

Whistler spoke often to us of the men he met at Gleyre’s: Poynter, 
Du Maurier, Lamont, Joseph Rowley. Leighton, in 1855, was study- 
ing at Couture’s, developing his theory that “ the best dodge is to be 
a devil of a clever fellow,” and Mrs. Barrington says he made Whistler’s 
acquaintance at the time and admired Whistler’s etchings. But 
Whistler never recalled Leighton among his fellow students, though 
he spoke often with affection of Thomas Armstrong, who worked 
at Ary Scheffer’s, and Aleco Ionides, not an art student but studying, 
no one seemed to know what or where. This is the group in Du 
Maurier’s novel of Paris student life, Trilby. It is regrettable that 
Du Maurier cherished his petty spite against Whistler for twenty- 
five years and then printed it, and so wrecked what Whistler imagined 
a genuine friendship. Lamont, “the Laird,’ Rowley, the “ Taffy,” 
Aleco Ionides, “‘ the Greek,” and Thomas Armstrong are dead. Sir 
Edward J. Poynter remains, and also Mr. Luke Jonides, who was then 
often in Paris. He has given us his impressions of Whistler at the 
time : | 

“‘T first knew Jimmie Whistler in the month of August 1855. My 
younger brother was with a tutor, and had made friends with Jimmie. 
He was just twenty-one years old, full of life and go, always ready for 
fun, good-natured and good-tempered. He wore a peculiar straw hat, 
slightly on the side of his head—it had a low crown and a broad brim.” 

Whistler etched himself in this hat, which startled even artists 
and students, and became a legend in the Latin Quarter. 

Mr. Rowley wrote us: ‘It was in 1857-8 that I knew Whistler, 

* See Chapter XLIV. 

1857] 35 


James McNeitt WHISTLER 


and a most amusing and eccentric fellow he was, with his long, black, 
thick, curly hair, and large felt hat with a broad black ribbon round 
it. I remember on the wall of the atelier was a representation of him, 
I believe done by Du Maurier, a sketch of him, then a fainter one, 
and then merely a note of interrogation—very clever it was and very 
like the original. In those days he did not work hard, and I have a 
faint recollection of seeing a head painted by him in deep Rembrandtish 
tones which was thought very good indeed. He was always smoking 
cigarettes, which he made himself, and his droll sayings caused us 
no end of fun. I don’t think he stayed long in any rooms. One 
day he told us he had taken a new one, and he was fitting it up peu 
a peu, and he had already got a tabouret and a chair. He told me 
tales of being invited to a reception at the American Minister’s, but, 
as he had no dress suit to go in, he had to borrow Poynter’s, who 
fitted him out, all except his boots. So he waited until the guests 
at the hotel had retired, when he went round the corridors, found 
what he wanted, and left them at the door on his return. It was 
more his manner and the clever way he told the tale that amused 
us. ... I have his first twelve etchings, which he did in 1858. I 
never saw him after I left Paris that year. He was never a friend 
of mine, and it was only occasionally he came to see us at the atelier 
in Notre-Dame-des-Champs.” 

Whistler was intimate for awhile with Sir Edward J. Poynter, who 
scarcely seems to have understood him. To Poynter Whistler was 
the ‘Idle Apprentice.” In his speech at the first Royal Academy 
Banquet (April 30, 1904) after Whistler’s death, Poynter said: 
“Thrown very intimately in Whistler’s company in early days, I 
knew him well when he was a student in Paris—that is, if he could 
be called a student, who, to my knowledge, during the two or three 
years when I was associated with him, devoted hardly as many weeks 
to study. His genius, however, found its way in spite of an excess 
of the natural indolence of disposition and love of pleasure of which 
a certain share has been the hereditary attribute of the art student.” 
And this bit of insolence was the final tribute to his memory paid by 
British Official Art. , 

“Whistler was never wholly one of us,” Armstrong told us. 
Whistler laughed at the Englishmen and their ways, above all at the 
36 [1857 


STUDENT Days 1n THE LaTIN QuaRTER 


boxing and sparring matches in their studios; “he could not see 
why they didn’t hire the concierges to do their fighting for them.” 
But he understood the French, and they understood him. He could 
speak their language, he knew Murger by heart before he came to 
Paris, and there got to know him personally. Mr. Ionides says that 
once, on the rive gauche, they met Murger, and Whistler introduced 
him. Whistler delighted in the humour and picturesqueness of it, 
and was always quoting Murger. The Englishmen at Gleyre’s were 
puzzled by him and his “ no shirt friends ” as he called one group of 
students. Every now and then they palled, even on him, and he 
would then tell the Englishmen that he “‘ must give up the ‘no shirt ’ 
set and begin to live cleanly.” The end came when, during an absence 
from Paris, he lent them his room, luxurious from the student stand- 
point, with a tin bath and blue china. The “no shirt friends ”’ could 
not change their habits with their surroundings. They made grogs in 
the bath; they never washed a plate, but when one side was dirty, 
ate off the other, and Whistler had not bargained to make his room 
the background for a new chapter in the Vie de Bohéme. But this 
was later, after his adventures with them had been the gossip of the 
Quarter, and had confirmed the diligent English in their impressions 
of his idleness. 

Among the French he made friends : Aubert, the first man he knew 
in Paris, a clerk in the Crédit Foncier; Fantin; Legros; Becquet, 
a musician ; Henri Martin, son of the historian ; Drouet, the sculptor ; 
Henry Oulevey and Ernest Delannoy, painters. From Fantin we have 
notes made just before his death. Legros prefers to remember nothing, 
the friendship in his case ending many years ago. Drouet and Oulevey 
have told us almost as much as Whistler did of those days. When 
Oulevey first knew him, Whistler lived in a little hotel in the Rue 
St. Sulpice ; then he moved to No. 1 Rue Bourbon-le-Chateau, near 
St. Germain-des-Prés ; and then to No. 3 Rue Campagne-Premicre, 
where Drouet had a studio. When remittances ran out, he climbed 
six flights and shared a garret with Delannoy, the Ernest of the stories 
Whistler liked best to tell. 

Mr. Miles writes us that he came to Paris in May 1857, with letters 
from Whistler’s family and a draft for him: “At the Beaux-Arts 
he was not to be found, but I got his address. He had gone from 
1857] 37 


James McNer1Ltt WHISTLER 


that. I was in despair, but went to the Luxembourg, hoping to find 
some trace of him. In looking at a picture, I backed into an easel, 
heard a muttered damn behind me—and there was Whistler painting 
busily. He took me to his quarters in a little back street, up ten 
flights of stairs—a tiny room with a brick floor, a cot bed, a chair 
on which were a basin and pitcher—and that was all! We sat on 
the cot and talked as cheerfully as if in a palace—and he got the 
draft. ‘ Now,’ said he, ‘J shall move downstairs, and begin all over 
again—furnish my room comfortably. You see, I have just eaten my 
washstand and borrowed a little, hoping the draft would arrive. Have 
been living for some time on my wardrobe. You are just in time; 
don’t know what I should have done, but it often happens this way ! 
I first eat a wardrobe, and then move upstairs a flight or two, but 
seldom get so high as this before the draft comes!’ How true this 
is | can’t say, but it sounds probable and very like Whistler at that 
age—he was then about twenty-three or just twenty-four at most 
—May 1857. Then Whistler showed me Paris: I met some of his 
painter friends. I remember only Lambert (French) and Poynter 
(English)—now a great swell. Whistler didn’t care much for Poynter 
at that time, but was witty and amusing, as usual. He dined with 
me at the best restaurant in Paris, which he had not done for. a long 
time, and dined me, the next day, at a little crémerie to show what 
his usual fare had been, and, indeed, usually was when the time was 
approaching for the arrival of his allowance.” 

The restaurant to which Whistler and his friends usually went 
was Lalouette’s, famous for a wonderful Burgundy at one franc the 
bottle, le cachet vert, ordered on great occasions, and more famous 
now for Bibi Lalouette, the subject of the etching, the child of the 
patron. Lalouette, like Siron at Barbizon, understood artists, and gave 
credit. Whistler, when he left Paris, owed Lalouette three thousand 
francs, every sou of which was paid, though it took a long time. To- 
day, unfortunately, such debts are not always discharged, and the 
charming system of other days exists no longer. They also dined 
at Madame Bachimont’s in the Place de la Sorbonne, a crémerie, 
where Whistler once gave a dinner to the American Consul, and invited 
“* Canichon,” the daughter of the house, and bought her a new hat 
for the occasion—a tremendous sensation through the Quarter. 

38 [1857 


StuDENT Days 1n THE LATIN QUARTER 


Drouet did not think that Whistler worked much. “He was 
every evening at the students’ balls, and never got up until eleven 
or twelve in the morning, so where was the time for work?” Oulevey 
cannot remember his doing much at Gleyre’s, or in the Luxembourg, 
or at the Louvre, but he was always drawing the people and the scenes 
of the Quarter. In the memory of both his work is overshadowed 
by his gaiety and his wit, his blague, his charm: “ tout a fait un homme 
a part,” is Oulevey’s phrase, with “ un ceur de femme et une volonté 
@homme.” Anything might be expected of him, and Drouet added 
that he was quick to resent an insult, always “‘ un petit rageur.” George 
Boughton, of a younger generation, when he came to the Quarter, 
found that all stories of larks were put down to Whistler. Mr. Luke 
Ionides writes : 

“ He was a great favourite among us all, and also among the grisettes 
- we used to meet at the gardens where dancing went on. I remember 
one especially—they called her the Tigresse. She seemed madly in 
love with Jimmie and would not allow any other woman te talk to him 
when she was present. She sat to him several times with her curly 
hair down her back. She had a good voice, and I often thought she 
had suggested Trilby to Du Maurier.” 

She was the model for Fumette, Eloise, a little modiste, who knew 
Musset by heart and recited his verses to Whistler, and who one day in 
a rage tore up, not his etchings as Mr. Wedmore says, as often, wrongly, 
but his drawings. Whistler was living in the Rue St. Sulpice, and the 
day he came home and found the pieces piled high on the table he 
wept. 

Another figure was La Mére Gérard. She was old and almost 
blind, was said to have written verse, and so come down in the world. 
She sold violets and matches at the gate of the Luxembourg. She was 
very paintable as she sat huddled up on the steps, and he got her to 
pose for him many times. She said she had a tapeworm, and if in the 
studio he asked her what she would eat or drink, her answer was, 
“ Du lait: 11 aime ga!” ‘They used to chaff him about her in the 
Quarter. Once, Lalouette invited all his clients to spend a day in the 
country, and Whistler accepted on condition that he could bring 
La Mere Gérard. She arrived, got up in style, sat at his side in the 
carriage in which they all drove off, and grew livelier as the day went 
1857] 39 


James McNeitz WuisTLER 


on. He ‘painted her in the afternoon: the portrait a success, he 
promised it to her, but first took it back to the studio to finish. Then 
he fell ill and was sent to England. When he returned and saw the 
portrait again, he thought it too good for La Mére Gérard. He made 
a copy for the old lady, who saw the difference and was furious. Not 
long after he was walking past the Luxembourg with Lamont. The 
old woman, huddled on the steps, did not look up: 

““ Eb bien, Madame Gérard, comment ¢a va ?”’ Lamont asked. 

* Assez bien, Monsieur, assez bien.” 

“ Et votre petit Américain?” 

To which she replied, not looking up, “‘ Luz ? On dit qu’il a craqué ! 
Encore une espéce de canaille de moins !” 

And Whistler laughed, and she knew him, as so many were to know 
him, by that laugh all his life. 

For ages after, in the Quarter, he was called “ Espéce de canaille.” 
And this is where Du Maurier got the story which he tells in Trilby— 
as he got all Yrzlby, in fact. 

Another character in the Quarter of whom Whistler never tired 
of telling us was the Count de Montezuma, the delightful, inimitable, 
impossible, incredible Montezuma, not a student, not a painter, but 
one after Whistler’s heart. He never had a sou, but always cheek 
enough to see him through. Whistler told us of him: 

“¢ This is the sort of thing he would do, and with an air—amazing ! 
He started one day for Charenton on the steamboat, his pockets, as 
usual, empty, and he was there for as long as he could stay. The boat 
broke down, a sergent de ville came on board and ordered everybody 
off except the captain and his family, who happened to be with him. 
The Montezuma paid no attention. With arms crossed, he walked 
up and down, looking at no one. They waited, but he walked on, 
up and down, up and down, looking at no one. The sergent de ville 
repeated, ‘ Zout le monde a terre’ The Montezuma gave no sign. 
‘ Et vous ?’ the sergent de ville asked at last. ‘ Fe suis de la famille !’ 
said the Montezuma. Opposite, staring at him, stood the captain 
with his wife and children. ‘ You see,’ said the sergent de ville, ‘ the 
captain does not know you, he says you are not of the family. You 
must go.’ ‘Moi,’ and the Montezuma drew himself up proudly, 
‘Moz! je suts le batard!’?” 

40 [1857 


PORTRAIT OF WHISTLER 


ETCHING. G. 54 


(Seepage 50) 


Pe 
Zw, 
2a 


~g 


_—- 4 
4 4 


ti¢gga 
i 4 \ 


Vee 


Nee 


SKETCHES OF THE JOURNEY TO ALSACE 
PEN DRAWINGS 


(See page 44) 


StupEenT Days 1n THE LATIN QUARTER 


Though he was frequently hard up, Whistler’s income seemed 
princely to students who lived on nothing. When there was money 
in his pockets, Mr. Ionides says, he spent it royally on others. When 
his pockets were empty, he managed to refill them in a way that still 
amazes Oulevey, who told us of the night when, after the café where 
they had squandered their last sows on kirsch had closed, he and Lam- 
bert and Whistler adjourned to the Halles for supper, ordered the best, 
and ateit. Then he and Lambert stayed in the restaurant as hostages, 
while Whistler, at dawn, went off to find the money. He was back 
when they awoke, with three or four hundred francs in his pocket. 
He had been to see an American friend, he said, a painter: ‘“‘ And do 
you know, he had the bad manners to abuse the situation ; he insisted 
on my looking at his pictures!” 

There were times when everybody failed, even Mr. Lucas, George 
Whistler’s friend, who was living in Paris and often came to his rescue. 
One summer day he pawned his coat when he was penniless and wanted 
an iced drink in a buvette across the way from his rooms in Rue Bourbon- 
le-Chateau. “ What would you?” he said. “It is warm!” And 
for the next two or three days he went in shirt-sleeves. From Mr. 
Ionides we have heard how Whistler and Ernest Delannoy carried 
their straw mattresses to the nearest Mont-de-Piété, stumbling up 
three flights of stairs under them, and were refused an advance by the 
man at the window. “ C'est bien,” said Ernest with his grandest 
air. “ C’estbien. Penverrai un commissionnaire !”? And they dropped 
the mattresses and walked out with difficulty, to go bedless home. 
Then there was a bootmaker to whom Whistler owed money, and who 
appeared with his bill, refusing to move unless he was paid. Whistler 
was courtesy itself, and, regretting his momentary embarrassment, 
begged the bootmaker to accept an engraving of Garibaldi, which he 
ventured to admire. The bootmaker was so charmed that he spoke no 
more of his bill, but took another order on the spot, and made new shoes 
into the bargain. 

Many of the things told of Whistler he used to tell us of Ernest 
or the others. Ernest he said it was, though some say it was Whistler, 
who had a commission to copy in the Louvre, but no canvas, paints, 
or brushes, and not a sou to buy them with. However, he went to 
the gallery in the morning, the first to arrive, and his businesslike 
1857] 41 


James McNertut WHIsTLER 


air disarmed the gardien as he picked out an easel, a clean canvas, a 
palette, a brush or two, and a stick of charcoal. He wrote his name in 
large letters on the back of the canvas, and, when the others began to 
drop in, was too busy to see anything but his work. Presently there 
was a row. What! an easel missing, a canvas gone, brushes not to 
be found! The gardien bustled round. Everybody talked at once. 
Ernest looked up in a fury—shameful! Why should he be disturbed ? 
What was it all about, anyhow ? When he heard what had happened 
no one was louder. It had come to a pretty pass in the Louvre when 
you couldn’t leave your belongings overnight without having them 
stolen! Things at last quieted down. Ernest finished his charcoal 
sketch, but his palette was bare. He stretched, jumped down from his 
high stool, strolled about, stopped to criticise here, to praise there, 
until he saw the colours he needed. The copy of the man who owned 
them ravished him. Astonishing! He stepped back to see it better. 
He advanced to look at the original, he grew excited, he gesticulated. 
The man, who had never been noticed before, grew excited too. 
Ernest talked the faster, gesticulated the more, until down came his 
thumb on the white or the blue or the red he wanted, and, with another 
sweep of his arm, a lump of it was on his palette. Farther on another 
supply offered. In the end, his palette well set, he went back to his 
easel, painting his copy. In some way he had supplied himself most 
plentifully with “turps,” so that several times the picture was in 
danger of running off his canvas. At last it was finished and shown to 
his patron, who refused to have it. Whistler succeeded in selling it for 
Ernest to a dealer; and, “ Do you know,” he said, “‘ I saw the picture 
years afterwards, and I think it was rather better than the original ! ” 
Oulevey’s version is that Whistler helped himself to a box of colours, 
and, when discovered by its owner, was all innocence and surprise 
and apology ; why, he supposed, of course, the boxes of colour were 
there for the benefit of students. 

On another occasion, when Ernest, according to Whistler, had 
finished a large copy of Veronese’s Marriage Feast at Cana, he and a 
friend, carrying it between them, started out to find a buyer. They 
crossed the Seine and offered it for five hundred francs to the big 
dealers on the right bank. Then they offered it for two hundred and 
fifty to the little dealers on the left. Then they went back and offered 
42 [1857 


i 


STUDENT Days IN THE LATIN QUARTER 


it for one hundred and twenty-five. Then they came across and offered 
it for seventy-five. And back again for twenty-five, and over once 
more for ten. And they were crossing still again, to try to get rid of 
it for five, when, on the Pont des Arts, an idea: they lifted it ; “ Un,” 
they said with a great swing, “‘ deux, trois, vlan!” and over it went 
into the river. There was a cry from the crowd, a rush to their side 
of the bridge, sergents de ville came running, omnibuses and cabs 
stopped on both banks, boats pushed out. It was an immense success, 
and they went home enchanted. 

Ernest was Whistler’s companion in the most wonderful adventure 
of all, the journey to Alsace when most of the French Set of etchings 
were made. Mr. Luke Ionides thinks it was in 1856. Fantin, who 
did not meet Whistler until 1858, remembered him just back from a 
journey to the Rhine, coming to the Café Moliére, and showing the 
etchings madeonthe way. The French Set was published in November 
of that year, and if Whistler returned late in the autumn, the series 
could scarcely have appeared so soon. However, more important 
than the date is the fact that on his journey the Liverdun, the Street 
at Saverne, and The Kitchen were etched. He had made somehow 
two hundred and fifty francs, and he and Ernest started out for Nancy 
and Strasburg. Mr. Leon Dabo tells us that his father was a fellow 
student of Whistler’s at Gleyre’s and lived at Saverne, in Alsace, 
and that it was to see him Whistler went there. And from Mr. Dabo 
we have the story of excursions that Whistler and Ernest made with 
his father and several friends: one to the ruins of the castle near 
the village of Dabo, where it is said their signatures may still be seen 
on a rock of brown sandstone; another to Gross Geroldseck, and the 
sketches Whistler made there were afterwards presented to the Saverne 
Museum. It may be that a third excursion was to Pfalzburg, the 
birthplace of Erckmann and Chatrian, whom Whistler knew and 
possibly then met for the first time. 

On the way back, at Cologne, one morning, Whistler and Ernest 
woke up to find their money gone. ‘ What is to be done ? ” asked 
Ernest. ‘“‘ Order breakfast,” said Whistler, which they did. There 
-was no American Consul in the town, and after breakfast he wrote to 
everybody who might help him: to a fellow student he had asked to 
forward letters from Paris, to Seymour Haden in London, to Amster- 
1858] 43 


James McNertt WuisTLER 


dam, where he thought letters might have been sent by mistake. Then 
they settled down to wait. Every day they would go to the post-office 
for letters, every day the official would say, “ Nichts! Nichts!” 
until they got known to the town—Whistler with his long hair, Ernest 
with his brown hollands and straw hat fearfully out of season. The 
boys of the town would follow to the post-office, where, before they 
were at the door, the official was shaking his head and saying “‘ Nichts / 
Nichts/” and all the crowd would yell, “ Nichts! Nichts!” At 
last, to escape attention, they spent their days sitting on the ramparts. 

At the end of a fortnight Whistler took his knapsack, put his plates 
in it, and carried it to the landlord, Herr Schmitz, whose daughter 
Little Gretchen he had etched—probably the plate called Gretchen 
at Heidelberg. He said he was penniless, but here were his copper- 
plates in his knapsack upon which he would set his seal. What was 
to be done with copper-plates? the landlord asked. They were 
to be kept with the greatest care as the work of a distinguished artist, 
Whistler answered, and when he was back in Paris, he would send the 
money to pay his bill, and then the landlord would send him the knap- 
sack. Herr Schmitz hesitated, while Whistler and Ernest were in 
despair over the necessity of trusting masterpieces to him. The bar- 
gain was struck after much talk. The landlord gave them a last break- 
fast. Lina, the maid, slipped her last groschen into Whistler’s hand, 
and the two set out to walk from Cologne to Paris with paper and 
pencils for baggage. 

Whistler used to say that, had they been less young, they could have 
seen only the terror of that tramp. A portrait was the price of every 
plate of soup, every egg, every glass of milk on the road. The children 
who hooted them had to be drawn before a bit of bread was given to 
them. They slept in straw. And they walked until Whistler’s light 
shoes got rid of most of their soles and bits of their uppers, and Ernest’s 
hollands grew seedier and seedier. But they were young enough to 
laugh, and one day Whistler, seeing Ernest tramping ahead solemnly © 
through the mud, the rain dripping from his straw hat, his linen coat 
a rag, shrieked with laughter as he limped. “ Que voulez-vous ?” 
Ernest said mournfully, “‘ les satsons m’ont toujours devancé/!” But 
it was the time of the autumn fairs, and, joining a lady who played 
the violin and a gentleman who played the harp, they gave enter- 
44 [1858 


PORTRAIT OF WHISTLER IN THE BIG HAT 


OIL 


In the Charles L. Freer Collection, National Gallery of American Art 
(See page 52) 


Bee 


a 
if 


DROUET 


“D9 


G 


ETCHING. 


) 


See page 49 


( 


StupENT Days 1n THE LaTIN QUARTER 


tainments in every village, beating a big drum, announcing themselves 
as distinguished artists from Paris, offering to draw portraits, five 
francs the full length, three francs the half-length. At times they beat 
the big drum in vain, and Whistler was reduced to charging five sous 
apiece for his portraits, but he did his best, he said, and there was not a 
drawing to be ashamed of. 

At last they came to Aix, where there was an American Consul 
who knew Major Whistler, and advanced fifty francs to his son. At 
Liége, poor, shivering, ragged Ernest got twenty from the French 
Consul, and ‘the rest of the journey was made in comfort. On his 
return, Whistler’s first appearance at the Café Moliére was a triumph. 
They had thought him dead, and here he was, le petit Américain ! 
And what blague, what calling for coffee pour le petit Whistler, pour 
notre petit Américain! And what songs ! 

a 
“ Carl west pas mort, larifla! fla! fla! 
Non, cest qwil dort. 
Pour le réveiller, trinquons nos verres ! 
Pour le réveiller, trinquons encore!” 


That Herr Schmitz was paid and delivered up the plates the prints 
are the proof. Some years after Whistler went back to Cologne with 
his mother. In the evening he slipped away to the old, little hotel, 
where the landlord and the landlord’s daughter, grown up, recognised 
‘him and rejoiced. 

These stories, and hundreds like them, still float about the Quarter, | 
told not only by Whistler, but by les vieux, who shake their heads 
over the present degeneracy of students and the tameness of student 
life—stories of the clay model of the heroic statue of Géricault, left, 
for want of money, swathed in rags, and sprinkled every morning until 
at last even the rags had to be sold, and then, when they were taken off, 
Géricault had sprouted with mushrooms that paid for a feast in the 
Quarter and enough clay to finish the statue: stories of a painter, 
in his empty studio, hiring a piano by the month that the landlord 
might see it carried upstairs and get a new idea of his tenant’s assets ; 
stories of the monkey tied to a string, let loose in other people’s larders, 
then pulled back, clasping loaves of bread and bottles of wine to its 
1858] 45 


James McNeitt WuiIsTLER 


bosom ; stories of students, with bedclothes pawned, sleeping in chests 
of drawers to keep warm; stories of Courbet’s Bazgneuse in wonderful 
Highland costume at the students’ balls; stories of practical jokes at 
the Louvre. It was the day of practical jokes, les charges: and 
Courbet, whom they worshipped, was the biggest blageur of them all, 
eventually signing his death-warrant with that last terrible charge, the 
fall of the Column Vendéme, which Paris never forgave. 

In this atmosphere, Whistler’s spirit, so alarming to his mother, 
found stimulus, and it is not to be wondered if his gaiety struck every- 
one in Paris as in St. Petersburg and Pomfret, West Point and Wash- 
ington. 


CHAPTER VII: WORKING DAYS IN THE LATIN QUARTER. 
THE YEARS EIGHTEEN FIFTY-FIVE TO EIGHTEEN FIFTY- 
NINE CONTINUED 


THE stories cannot be left out of Whistler’s life as a student, for they 
lived in his memory. The English students brought back the impression 
that he was an idler, the French thought so too, and the English believe 
to-day that he was an idler always. And yet he worked in Paris as 
much as he played. His convictions, his preferences, his prejudices, 
were formed during those years. His admiration for Poe, a West Point 
man, was strengthened by the hold Poe had taken of French men of 
letters. His disdain of nature, his contempt for anecdote in art as 
a concession to the ignorant public, his translation of the subjects of 
painting into musical terms, and much else charged against him as 
deliberate pose, can be traced to Baudelaire. It is incomprehensible 
how he found time to read while a student, and yet he knew the litera- 
ture of the day. With artists and their movements he was more 
familiar. He mastered all that Gleyre could teach on the one hand, 
Courbet on the other. He came under the influence of Lecocq de 
Boisbaudran, who was occupied with the study of values, effects of 
night, and training of memory. It is absurd for anyone to say that 
Whistler idled away his four full years in Paris. 

The younger men in their rebellion against official art were not 
so foolish as to disdain the Old Masters. They went to the Louvre 
46 [1858 


Workinc Days InN THE LATIN QUARTER 


to learn how to use their eyes and their hands. There they copied 
the pictures, and there they met each other. To Whistler the French- 
men were more sympathetic than the English, and he joined them 
at the Louvre. Respect for the great traditions of art always was 
his standard: ‘‘ What is not worthy of the Louvre is not art,” he 
said. Rembrandt, Hals, and Velasquez were the masters by whom 
he was influenced. There are only a few pictures by Velasquez in the 
Louvre, and Whistler’s early appreciation of him has been a puzzle to 
some, who, to account for it, have credited him with a journey when 
a student to Madrid. But that journey was not made in the fifties 
or ever, though he planned it more than once. A great deal could be 
learned about Velasquez without going to Spain. Whistler knew the 
London galleries, and in 1857 he visited the Art Treasures Exhibition 
at Manchester, taking Henri Martin with him. There was a difficulty 
about the money for their railway fares, and he suggested to T. Arm- 
strong that he might borrow it from a friend of the family who was 
manager of the North-Western. ‘ But have you paid him the three 
hundred francs he has already lent you?” Armstrong asked. ‘ Why, 
no,” Whistler answered; “‘ ought that to make any difference ? ” 
And he consulted the friend as to whether it would not be the right 
thing to ask for another loan. From this friend, or somebody, he 
managed to get the money, and Miss Emily Chapman finds in her 
diaries, which she has consulted for us, that on September 11, 1857, 
Rose, her sister, ‘‘ went to Darwen and found Whistler and Henri 
Martin staying at Earnsdale” with another sister, Mrs. Potter; “a 
merry evening,” the note finishes. Fourteen fine examples of Velasquez 
were in the Manchester Exhibition, lent from private collections in 
England, among them the Venus, Admiral Pulido Pareja, Duke Olivarez 
on Horseback, Don Balthazar in the Tennis Court, some of them now in 
the British National Gallery. 

Whistler once described himself to us as “a surprising youth, 
suddenly appearing in the group of French students from no one 
knew where, with my Mére Gérard and the Piano Picture [At the 
Piano] for introduction, and making friends with Fantin and Legros, 
who had already arrived, and Courbet, whom they were all raving 
about, and who was very kind to me.” 

The Piano Picture was painted toward the end of his student 
1858] 47 


James McNe1tt WuisTLER 


years in Paris, the Mére Gérard a little earlier, so that this agrees with 
Fantin’s notes. In 1858, Fantin says, “I was copying the Marriage 
Feast at Cana in the Louvre when I saw passing one day a strange 
creature—personnage étrange, le Whistler en chapeau bizarre, who, 
amiable and charming, stopped to talk, and the talk was the be- 
ginning of our friendship, strengthened that evening at the Café 
“Moltere.” 

Carolus Duran writes us, from the Académie de France in Rome, 
that he and Whistler met as students in Paris; after that he lost sight 
of Whistler until the days of the new Salon, but, though there were 
a few meetings then, his memories are altogether of the student years. 
Bracquemond has recalled for us that he was making the preliminary 
drawing for his etching after Holbein’s Erasmus in the Louvre when 
he first saw Whistler. Their meetings were cordial, but never led 
to intimacy. With Legros Whistler’s friendship did become intimate, 
and the two, with Fantin, formed at that date what Whistler called 
their ‘‘ Society of Three.” 

Fantin was somewhat older, and had been studying much longer, 
and had, among students, a reputation for wide and sound knowledge : 
‘“‘a learned painter,” Armstrong says. M. Bénédite thinks that the 
friendship was useful to Fantin, but of the greatest importance to 
Whistler, on whose art in its development it had a marked influence. 
Mr. Luke Ionides, on the other hand, insists that “ even in those 
early days, Whistler’s influence was very much felt. He had decided 
views, which were always listened to with respect and regard by many 
older artists, who seemed to recognise his genius.” The truth probably 
is that Whistler and Fantin influenced each other. They worked in 
sympathy, and the understanding between them was complete. They 
not only studied in the Louvre, but joined the group at Bonvin’s 
studio to work from the model under Courbet. 

With Courbet, we come to an influence which cannot be doubted, 
much as Whistler regretted it as time went on. Oulevey remembers 
Whistler calling on Courbet once, and saying enthusiastically as he left 
the house, “ C’est un grand homme!” and for several years his pictures 
showed how strong this influence was. M. Duret even sees in Courbet’s 
*‘ Manifestoes ” forerunners of Whistler’s letters at a later date to the 
papers. Courbet, whatever mad pranks he might play with the 
48 [1858 


Workince Days 1N THE LATIN QUARTER 


bourgeois, was seriousness itself in his art, and the men who studied 
under him learned to be serious, Whistler most of all. 

The proof of Whistler’s industry is in his work—in his pictures 
and prints, which are amazing in quality and quantity for the student 
who, Sir Edward Poynter believes, worked in two or three years only 
as many weeks. It would be nearer the truth to say that he never 
stopped working. Everything that interested him he made use of. 
The women he danced with at night were his models by day: Fumette, 
who, as she crouches, her hair loose on her shoulders, in that early 
etching, looks the Tigresse who tore up his drawings in a passion ; and 
Finette, the dancer in a famous quadrille, who, when she came to 
London, was announced as “ Madame Finette in the cancan, the national 
dance of France.” His friends had to pose for him: Drouet, in the 
plate, done, he told us, in two sittings, one of two and a half hours, 
the other of an hour and a half; Axenfeld, the brother of a famous 
physician ; Becquet, the sculptor-musician, “the greatest man who 
ever lived ” to his friends, to the world unknown; Astruc, painter, 
sculptor, poet, editor of L’ Artiste, of whom his wife said that he was 
the first man since the Renaissance who combined all the arts, but who 
is only remembered in Whistler’s print ; Delatre, the printer; Riault, 
the engraver. Bibi Valentin was the son of another engraver. And 
there is the amusing pencil sketch of Fantin in bed on a winter day, 
working away in his overcoat, muffler, and top hat, trying to keep 
warm: one kept among a hundred lost. The streets where Whistler 
wandered, the restaurants where he dined, became his studios. At the 
house near the Rue Dauphine he etched Bibi Lalouette. His Soupe a 
Trois Sous was done in a cabaret kept by Martin, whose portrait is in 
the print at the extreme left, and who was famous in the Quarter for 
having won the Cross of the Legion of Honour at an earlier age than 
any man ever decorated, and then promptly losing it. Mr. Ralph 
Thomas says: ‘* While Whistler was etching this, at twelve o’clock at 
night, a gendarme came up to him and wanted to know what he was 
doing. Whistler gave him the plate upside down, but officialism could 
make nothing of it.” 

There is hardly one of these etchings that is not a record of his daily 
life and of the people among whom he lived, though to make it such 
a record was the last thing he was thinking of. 

1858] D 49 


James McNeiitt WuisTLER 


Whistler’s first set of etchings was published in November 1858. 
The prints were not the first he made after leaving Washington. On 
the rare Au Sixiéme, supposed to be unique, Haden, to whom it had 
belonged, wrote, ‘‘ Probably the first of Whistler’s etchings,” but then 
Haden wrote these things on others, and knew little about them. A 
portrait of himself, another of his niece Annte Haden, the Dutchman 
holding the Glass, are as early, if not earlier. There were twelve plates, 
some done in Paris, some during the journey to the Rhine, some 
in London. There was also an etched title with his portrait, for 
which Ernest, putting on the big hat, sat. Etched above is “ Douze 
Eaux Fortes @aprés Nature par James Whistler,” and to one side, 
“‘ Imp. Delatre, Rue St. Facques, 171, Paris, Nov. 1858.” Whistler 
dedicated the set to mon vteil amt Seymour Haden, and issued and 
sold it himself for two guineas. Delatre printed the plates, and, 
standing at his side, Drouet said, Whistler learned the art. Delatre’s 
shop was the room described by the De Goncourts, with the two 
windows looking on a bare garden, the star wheel, the man in grey 
blouse pulling it, the old noisy clock in the corner, the sleeping dog, 
the children peeping in at the door; the room where they waited for 
their first.proof with the emotion they thought nothing else could give. 
Drouet said that Whistler never printed at this time. But Oulevey 
remembers a little press in the Rue Campagne-Premiére, and Whistler 
pulling the proofs for those who came to buy them. He was already 
hunting for old paper, loitering at the boxes along the quais, tearing out 
fly-leaves from old books. Passages in many plates of the series, 
especially in La Mére Gérard and La Marchande de Moutarde, are, as 
we have said, like his work in The Coast Survey, No. 1. For the only 
time, and as a result of his training at Washington, his handling 
threatened to become mannered. But in the Street at Saverne he over- 
came his mannerism, while in others, not in the series but done during 
these years, the Drouet, Soupe a Trois Sous, Bibi Lalouette, he had 
perfected his early style of drawing, biting, and dry-point. We never 
asked him how the French plates were bitten, but, no doubt, it was in 
the traditional way by biting all over and stopping out. They were 
drawn directly from Nature, as can be seen in his portraits of places 
which are reversed in the prints. So far as we know, he scarcely ever 
made a preliminary sketch. We can recall none of his etchings at any 
50 [1858 


Workinc Days 1n THE Latin QuaRTER 


period that might have been done from memory or sketches, except 
the Street at Saverne, the Venetian Nocturnes, the Nocturne, Dance 
House, Amsterdam, Weary, and Fanny Leyland portraits. 

His first commissions in Paris were, he told us, copies made in 
the Louvre. They were for Captain Williams, a Stonington man, 
familiarly known as “ Stonington Bill,” whose portrait he had painted 
before leaving home. “Stonington Bill” must have liked it, for 
when he came to Paris shortly afterwards he gave Whistler a com- 
mission to paint as many copies at the Louvre as he chose for twenty- 
five dollars apiece. Whistler said he copied a snow scene with a 
horse and soldier standing by and another at its feet, and never after- 
wards could remember who was the painter; the busy picture de- 
tective may run it to ground for the edification of posterity. There 
was a St. Luke with a halo and draperies; a woman holding up a 
child towards a barred window beyond which, seen dimly, was the 
face of aman; and an inundation, no doubt The Deluge or The Wreck. 
He was sure he must have made something interesting out of them, 
he knew there were wonderful things even then—the beginnings of 
harmonies and of purple schemes—he supposed it must have been 
intuitive. Another Stonington man commissioned him to paint Ingres’ 
Andromeda chained to the rock—probably the Angelina of Ingres 
which he and Tissot are said to have copied side by side, though a 
copy of an Andromeda by him has been shown in New York, and other 
alleged copies are now turning up. All, he said, might be still at 
Stonington, and shown there as marvellous things by Whistler. To 
these may be added the Diana by Boucher in the London Memorial 
Exhibition, owned by Mr. Louis Winans, and the group of cavaliers 
after Velasquez, the one copy Fantin remembered his doing. A 
study of a nun was sent to the London Exhibition, but not shown, 
with the name “ Wisler ” on the back of the canvas, not a bad study 
of drapery, which may have been, despite the name, another of his 
copies or done in a sketch class. 

The first original picture in Paris was, he assured us, the Mére 
Gérard, in white cap, holding a flower, which he gave to Swinburne. 
There is another painting of her, we believe, and from Drouet we heard 
of a third, which has vanished. Whistler painted a number of por- 
traits ; some it would probably be impossible to trace, a few are well 
1858] 51 


James McNertt WHIsTLER 


known. One—a difficult piece of work, he said—was of his father, after 
a lithograph sent him for the purpose by his brother George, and he 
began another of Henry Harrison, whom he had known in Russia. A 
third was of himself in his big hat. Two were studies of models: the 
Téte de Paysanne, a woman in a white cap, younger than the Mere 
Gérard, and the Head of an Old Man Smoking, a pedlar of crockery 
whom Whistler came across one dayin the Halles, a full face with large 
brown hat, for long the property of Drouet and left by him to the 
Louvre. But the finest is 4t the Piano, The Piano Picture as Whistler 
called it. It is the portrait of his sister and his niece, the ‘* wonderful 
little Annie ” of the etchings, now Mrs. Charles Thynne, who gave him 
many sittings, and to whom, in return, he gave his pencil sketches made 
on the journey to Alsace. 

Mr. Gallatin, in Portraits of Whistler, and M. Duret, in the second 
edition of Whistler, have reproduced an oil portrait entitled Whistler 
Smoking, which was bought from a French family in 1913. The most 
cursory glance at even the reproduction is enough to show that the 
portrait is devoid of merit, while the statement that it was hidden from 
1860 to 1913 would require considerable further proof. The whole 
thing is but a clumsy attempt to imitate the Whistler in the Big Hat, 
as well as the etching of the same subject. Every part of it is stolen 
from some other work, down to the hand or handkerchief, just indi- 
cated, which is taken from the portrait of his mother. It is true that 
the signature is on the painting, but this no longer proves anything, 
as a signature is the easiest part of a work of art to forge. 

The portraits “smell of the Louvre.” The method is acquired 
from close study of the Old Masters. “ Rembrandtish ” is the usual 
criticism passed on these early canvases, with their paint laid thickly — 
on and their heavy shadows. Indeed, it is evident that his own 
portrait, Whistler in the Big Hat, was suggested by Rembrandt’s 
Young Man in the Louvre. To his choice of subjects, in his pictures 
as in his etchings, he brought the realism of Courbet, painting people 
as he saw them, and not in clothes borrowed from the classical and — 
medieval wardrobes of the fashionable studio. Yet there is the © 
personal note: Whistler does not efface himself in his devotion to — 
the masters. This is felt in the way a head or a figure is placed on 
the canvas. The arrangement of the pictures on the wall and the © 
52 [1859 


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mouldings of the dado in At the Piano, the harmonious balance of the 
black and white in the dresses of the mother and the little girl, show 
the sense of design, of pattern, which he brought to perfection in 
the Mother, Carlyle, and Miss Alexander. There was nothing like it 
in the painting of the other young men, of Degas, Fantin, Legros, 
Ribot, Manet; nothing like it in the work of the older man, their 
leader, when painting L’Enterrement a Ornans and Bonjour, Monsieur 
Courbet. M. Duret says that Whistler’s fellow students, who had 
immediately recognised his etchings, now accepted his paintings, which 
confirms Whistler’s statement to us. 

At the Piano was sent to the Salon of 1859 with two etchings the 
titles of which are not given. The etchings were hung, the picture 
was rejected. It may have been because of what was personal in it ; 
strong personality in the young usually fares that way at official hands. 
Fantin’s story is: 

“One day Whistler brought back from London the Piano Picture, 
representing his sister and niece. He was refused with Legros, Ribot, 
and myself at the Salon. Bonvin, whom I knew, interested himself 
in our rejected pictures, and exhibited them in his studio, and invited 
his friends, of whom Courbet was one, to see them. I recall very well 
that Courbet was struck with Whistler’s picture.” | 

Two portraits by Fantin, some studies of still life by Ribot, and 
Legros’ portrait of his father, which had also been rejected, were 
shown. The rejection was a scandal. The injustice was flagrant, the 
exhibitors at Bonvin’s found themselves famous, and Whistler’s picture 
impressed many artists besides Courbet. With its exhibition Whistler 
ceased to be the student, though he was a student all his life; it was 
only in his last years that he felt he was “‘ beginning to understand,” 
he often said to us. 


CHAPTER VIII : THE BEGINNINGS IN LONDON. THE YEARS 
EIGHTEEN FIFTY-NINE TO EIGHTEEN SIXTY-THREE. 


Ir was now that Whistler began his endless journeys between Paris 
and London. At first he stayed with his sister, Lady Haden, at 
62 Sloane Street, sometimes bringing with him Henri Martin or Legros. 
1859] 53 


James McNett WuHisTLER 


In 1859 he invited Fantin, promising him glory and fortune. In 
his notes Fantin wrote: 

“Whistler talked about me at this moment to his brother-in-law, 
Seymour Haden, who urged me to come to London; he had also 
talked about me to Boxall. I should like it known that it was Whistler 
who introduced me to England.” : 

Fantin arrived in time for them to go to the Academy, then still 
in the east end of the National Gallery. Whistler exhibited for the 
first time, and Two Etchings from Nature—a perplexing title, for all 
his etchings were “ from Nature ”—were hung in the little octagon 
room, or “ dark cell,” reserved for black-and-white. ‘* Les souvenirs 
les plus vifs que j’at conservés de ce temps a Londres,” Fantin wrote, 
“étaient notre admiration pour Texposition des tableaux de Maullais 
a ? Academy.” Millais showed The Vale of Rest, and the two young 
men, fresh from Paris studios, recognised in his work the realism 
which, though conceived and expressed so differently, was the aim of 
the Pre-Raphaelites as of Courbet. 

Seymour Haden, who had already etched some of his finest plates, 
was kind to his visitors. He not only ordered copies from Fantin— 
amongst them one of the many Fantin made of Veronese’s Marriage 
Feast at Cana—but he bought the pictures of Legros, who was “ at 
one moment in so deplorable a condition,” Whistler said to us, “ that 
it needed God or a lesser person to pull him out of it. And so I brought 
him over to London, and for a while he worked in my studio. He 
had, before coming, sold a church interior to Haden, who liked it, 
though he found the floor out of perspective. One day he took it 
to the room upstairs where he did his etchings, and turned the key. 
When it reappeared the floor was in perspective according to Haden. 
A gorgeous frame was bought, and the picture was hung conspicuously 
in the drawing-room.” 

Whistler thought Haden restive when he heard that Legros was 
coming, but nothing was said. ‘The first day Legros was impressed ; 
he had been accustomed to seeing himself in cheap frames, if in any 
frame at all. But gradually he looked inside the frame, and Haden’s 
work dawned upon him. That he could not stand. What was he 
to do? he asked Whistler. ‘ Run off with it,” Whistler suggested. 
“We got it down, called a four-wheeler, and carried it away to the 
54 [1859 


——. 


ee ee ee ere ee ee ee ee ee oe 


ee Ee ee 


Tue BEGINNINGS IN LONDON 


studio—our own little kopje,” for Whistler told us the story in the days 
of the Boer War. Haden discovered his loss as soon as he got home, 
and in a rage hurried after them to the studio. But when he saw 
it on an easel, Legros repainting the perspective according to his 
idea, well, there was nothing to say. Where the studio was we do 
not know. 

Haden even endured Ernest, who had not yet caught up with the 
seasons, and who went about in terror of the butler, taking his daily 
walks in slippers rather than expose his boots to the servants, and 
enchanting Whistler by asking “‘ Mais, mon cher, qu’est-ce que cest que 
cette espece de cataracte de Niagara?’ when Haden turned on the 
shower-bath in the morning. Fantin was almost as dismayed by the 
luxury at the Hadens’. ‘‘ What lunches!” he wrote home, ‘ what 
roast beef and sherry! And what dinners—always champagne! ” 
And if he was distressed by the street organs grinding out the Miséréré 
of Verdi, he could console himself by listening to Lady Haden’s brilliant 
playing on the piano, until paradisiaque was the adjective he found to 
describe his life there to his parents. 

Whistler fell in at once with the English students whom he had 
known in Paris: Poynter, Armstrong, Luke and Aleco Ionides. Du 
Maurier came back from Antwerp in 1860, and for several months he 
and Whistler lived together in Newman Street. Armstrong remembers 
their studio, with a rope like a clothes-line stretched across it and, 
floating from it, a bit of brocade no bigger than a handkerchief, which 
was their curtain to shut off the corner used as a bedroom. There was 
hardly ever a chair to sit on, and often with the brocade a towel hung 
from the line: their decoration and drapery. Du Maurier’s first Punch 
drawing—in a volume full of crinolines and Leech (vol. xxxix., 
October 6, 1860)—shows the two, shabby, smoking, calling at a photo- 
grapher’s to be met with an indignant, ‘No smoking here, sirs! ” 
followed by a severe, ‘‘ Please to remember, gentlemen, that this 
is not a common Hartist’s Studio!” The figure at the door, with 
curly hair, top hat, glass in his eye, hands behind his back smoking 
a cigarette, is Whistler. Probably it was then also that Du Maurier 
made a little drawing, in Mr. Howard Mansfield’s collection of Whistler, 
Charles Keene, and himself, with their autographs below; Whistler 
again with a glass in his eye. 

1860] 55 


James McNeitt WuIsTLER 


“Nearly always, on Sunday, he used to come to our house,” 
Mr. Ionides tells us, and there was no more delightful house in London. 
Alexander Ionides, the father, was a wealthy merchant with a talent 
for gathering about him all the interesting people in town or passing 
through, artists, musicians, actors, authors. Mr. Luke Ionides says 
that Whistler came to their evenings and played in their private 
theatricals, and there remains a programme designed by Du Maurier 
with a drawing of himself, Whistler, and Aleco Ionides at the top, 
while Luke Ionides and his sister, Mrs. Coronio, stand below with the 
list of dramatis persone between. And Whistler also took part in 
their masquerades and fancy-dress balls, once mystifying everybody 
by appearing in two different costumes in the course of the evening 
and winding up as a sweep. He never lost his joy in the memory of 
Alma-Tadema, on another of these occasions, as an “ Ancient Roman” 
in toga and eye-glasses, crowned with flowers: ‘“ amazing,” Whistler 
said, “‘ with his bare feet and Romano-Greek St. John’s Wooden 
eye!” 

Mr. Arthur Severn writes us: ‘“‘ My first recollection of Whistler 
was at his brother-in-law’s, Seymour Haden (he and Du Maurier 
were looking over some Liber Studiorum engravings), and then at 
Arthur Lewis’ parties on Campden Hill, charming gatherings of talented 
men of all kinds, with plenty of listeners and sympathisers to applaud. 
The Moray Minstrels used to sing, conducted by John Foster, and 
when they were resting anyone who could do anything was put up. 
Du Maurier with Harold Sower would sing a duet, Les Deux Aveugles ; 
Grossmith half killed us with laughter (it was at these parties he first 
came out). Stacy Marks was a great attraction, but towards the end 
of the evening, when we were all in accord, there were yells for Whistler, 
the eccentric Whistler! He was seized and stood up on a high stool, 
where he assumed the most irresistibly comic look, put his glass in 
his eye, and surveyed the multitude, who only yelled the more. When 
silence reigned he would begin to sing in the most curious way, suiting 
the action to the words with his small, thin, sensitive hands. His 
songs were in argot French, imitations of what he had heard in low 
cabarets on the Seine when he was at work there. What Whistler and 
Marks did was so entirely themselves and nobody else, so original or 
quaint, that they were certainly the favourites.” 

56 [1860 


——c-—"- 


Tue Becinnincs 1n Lonpon 


“‘ Breezy, buoyant and debonair, sunny and affectionate,” he 
seemed to George Boughton, who could not remember the time when 
“‘ Whistler’s sayings and doings did not fill the artistic air,” nor when 
he failed to give a personal touch, a “ something distinct ” to his 
appearance. His “cool suit of linen duck and his jaunty straw hat ” 
were conspicuous in London, where personality of dress was more 
startling than in Paris. Boughton refers to a flying trip to Paris at 
this period, when he was “ flush of money and lovely in attire.” Others 
recall meeting him, armed with two umbrellas, a white and a black, 
his practical preparation for all weathers. Val Prinsep speaks of 
the pink silk handkerchief stuck in his waistcoat, but this must have 
been later. “A brisk little man, conspicuous from his swarthy com- 
plexion, his gleaming eye-glass, and his shock of curly black hair, amid 
which shone his celebrated white lock,” is Val Prinsep’s description 
of him in the fifties. 

But the white lock is not seen in any contemporary painting or 
etching. It was first introduced, as far as we can discover, in his 
portrait owned by the late Mr. McCulloch—the portrait a few years 
ago was in Detroit—and in the etching Whistler with the White Lock, 
1879, though there may be earlier work showing it. We never asked 
him about it, and his family, friends, and contemporaries, whom we 
have asked, cannot explain it. Some say that it was a birthmark, 
others that he dyed all his hair save the one lock. But he did not 
dye his hair. Du Maurier, according to Dr. Williamson, attributed 
it to a wound, either by bullet or sword-cut, received at Valparaiso : 
the wound was sewn up, the white lock appeared almost immediately. 
Mr. Theodore Roussel tells a somewhat similar story. But we think 
if this were so, Whistler would have told us of it. In an exhibition 
of oil paintings and pastels by Whistler held in the Metropolitan 
Museum, New York, in March igio, a painting was shown entitled 
Sketch of Mr. Whistler. It was lent by Mr. Charles L. Freer and 
was sold to him by an art dealer. We are by no means certain that 
it is genuine, though we have only see the reproduction, the frontis- 
piece of the catalogue. J. recently went to Detroit, but in Mr. Freer’s 
absence he was not allowed to see the painting. If it is genuine, 
it is most likely a study by Whistler of the Chinese dress in which 
he posed for Fantin. In Freer’s sketch the white lock appears. Though 
1860] 57 


James McNertt WuisTLER 


it could easily have been added later, its presence to us seems proof 
that the picture is most probably not genuine, and certainly is not 
contemporary, because in Fantin’s head of Whistler from the Toast, 
in Hommage a Delacroix, and Whistler’s own portraits of that time 
the white lock is not shown. Many, seeing him for the first time, 


mistook the white lock for a floating feather. He used to call it the 


Meche de Silas, and it amused him to explain that the Devil caught 
those whom he would preserve by a lock of hair which turned white. 
Whatever its origin, Whistler cherished it with greatest care. 

Whistler had stumbled upon a period in England when, though 
painters prospered, art was at a low ebb. Pre-Raphaelitism was on 
the wane. A few interesting young men were at work: Charles 
Keene, Boyd Houghton, Albert Moore; Fred Walker and George 
Mason. But Academicians were at the high tide of mid-Victorian 
success and sentiment. They puzzled Whistler no less than he puzzled 
them. 

“Well, you know, it was this way. When I came to London 
I was received graciously by the painters. Then there was coldness, 
and I could not understand. Artists locked themselves up in their 
studios—opened the doors only on the chain; if they met each other 
in the street they barely spoke. Models went round with an air of 
mystery. When I asked one where she had been posing, she said, 
‘To Frith and Watts and Tadema.’ ‘Golly! what a crew!’ I said, 
‘And that’s just what they says when I told ’em I was a-posing to 
you!’ Then I found out the mystery ; it was the moment of painting 
the Royal Academy picture. Each man was afraid his subject might 
be stolen. It was the era of the subject. And, at last, on Varnishing 
Day, there was the subject in all its glory—wonderful! The British 
subject! Like a flash the inspiration came—the Inventor! And in 
the Academy there you saw him: the familiar model—the soldier 
or the Italian—and there he sat, hands on knees, head bent, brows 
knit, eyes staring; in a corner, angels and cogwheels and things ; 
close to him his wife, cold, ragged, the baby in her arms; he had 
failed! The story was told; it was clear as day—amazing! The 
British subject! What.” 

Into this riot of subject, to the Academy of 1860, dt the Piano 
was sent, with five prints: Monsieur Astruc, Rédacteur du ‘fournal 


58 [1860 


a oe = 


Tue Becinnincs 1n Lonpbon 


‘ L’ Artiste,’ an unidentified portrait, and three of the Thames Set. 
Whistler had given At the Piano, the portrait of his sister and niece, 
to Seymour Haden, “in a way,” he said: 

“Well, you know, it was hanging there, but I had no particular 
satisfaction in that. Haden just then was playing the authority on 
art, and he could never look at it without pointing out its faults and 
telling me it never would get into the Academy—that was certain.” 

However, at the Academy it was accepted, Whistler’s first picture 
in an English exhibition. The Salon was not held then every year, 
and he could not hope to repeat his success in Paris. But in London 
At the Piano was as much talked about as at Bonvin’s. It was bought 
by John Phillip, the Academician (no relation to the family into 
which Whistler afterwards married). Phillip had just returned from 
Spain with, “ well, you know, Spanish notions about things, and he 
asked who had painted the picture, and they told him a youth no one 
knew about, who had appeared from no one knew where. Phillip 
looked up my address in the catalogue and wrote to me at once to say 
he would like to buy it, and what was its price? I answered in a letter 
which, I am sure, must have been very beautiful. I said that, in my 
youth and inexperience, I did not know about these things, and I would 
leave to him the question of price. Phillip sent me thirty pounds ; 
when the picture was last sold, to Edmund Davis, it brought two 
thousand eight hundred! ” 

Thackeray, Lady Ritchie tells us, “‘ went to see the picture of Annie 
Haden standing by the piano, and admired it beyond words, and stood 
looking at it with real delight and appreciation.” It was the only 
thing George Boughton brought vividly away in his memories of 
the Academy. The critics could not ignore it. “It at once made 
an impression,” Mr. W. M. Rossetti wrote. As “ an eccentric, uncouth, 
smudgy, phantom-like picture of a lady at a pianoforte, with a ghostly- 
looking child in a white frock looking on,” it struck the Daily Telegraph. 
But the Atheneum, having discovered the “‘ admirable etchings ” in 
the octagon room, managed to see in the “‘ Piano Picture, despite a 
recklessly bold manner and sketchiness of the wildest and roughest 
kind, a genuine feeling for colour and a splendid power of composition 
and design, which evince a just appreciation of nature very rare among 


artists. If the observer will look for a little while at this singular 
1860] | 59 


James McNertt WuisTLerR 


production, he will perceive that it ‘ opens out ’ just as a stereoscopic 
view will—an excellent quality due to the artist’s feeling for atmosphere 
and judicious gradation of light.” 

We quote these criticisms because the general idea is that Whistler 
waited long for notice. He was always noticed, praised or blamed, 
never ignored, after 1859. 

Whistler went back to Paris late in that year. December 1859 is 
the date of his Isle de la Cité, etched from the Galerie d’Apollon in 
the Louvre, with Notre Dame in the distance and the Seine and its 
bridges between. It was his only attempt to rival Méryon, and he 
succeeded badly. The fact that he gave it up when half done shows 
that he thought so and was too big an artist to be an imitator, especially 
of a “ little man like Méryon.” Besides, he was much less in Paris now, 
for, though he preferred life there, he found his subjects in London, 
which he soon made his home, as it continued to be, except for a few 
intervals, until his death. It was not the people he cared for, nor the 
customs. He was drawn by the beauty that no one had felt with the 
same intensity and understanding. 

He went to work on the river. In these first years he dated his 
prints and pictures, as he seldom did later, and 1859 is bitten on 
many of the Thames plates. He saw the river as no one had seen it 
before, in its grime and glitter, with its forest of shipping, its endless 
procession of barges, its grim warehouses, its huge docks, its little 
waterside inns. And as he saw it so he rendered it, as no one ever had 
before—as it is. It was left to the American youth to do for London 
what Rembrandt had done for Amsterdam. There were eleven plates 
on the Thames during this year. To make them he wandered from 
Greenwich to Westminster; they included Black Lion Wharf, Tyzac, 
Whiteley and Co., which he never excelled at any period; and in 
each the warehouses or bridges, the docks or ships, are worked out 
with a mass and marvel of detail. The Pre-Raphaelites were not so 
faithful to Nature, so minute in their rendering. The series was 
a wonderful achievement for the young man of twenty-five never 
known to work by his English fellow students, a wonderful achieve- 
ment for an artist of any age. 

Those who thought he idled in Paris were as sure of his application 
in London. ‘On the Thames he worked tremendously,” Armstrong 
60 _ [1859 


THE THAMES IN ICE 


OIL 


In the Charles L, Freer Collection, National Gallery of American7Art 
(See page 63) 


% 


ie 


te UU ete 


ROTHERHITHE 


7.06 


G 


ETCHING, 


(See page 63) 


Tue BeEcINNINGS IN LONDON 


said, “ not caring then to have people about or to let anyone see too 
much of his methods.” He stayed for months at Wapping to be 
near his subjects, though not cutting himself off entirely from his 
friends. Sir Edward Poynter, Mr. Ionides, M. Legros, Du Maurier 
visited him. Mr. Ionides recalls long drives down by the Tower and 
the London Docks to get to the place, as out of the way now as then. 
He says Whistler lived in a little inn, rather rough, frequented by 
skippers and bargees, close to Wapping steamboat pier. But there 
is no doubt that much of his work was done from Cherry Gardens, 
on the other side of the river. Unfortunately it was not until after 
his death that we looked into this matter. At any rate, if he lived 
at Wapping, he worked a great deal at Cherry Gardens, also often from 
boats and barges, he told us, and this one can see in the prints. Some- 
times he would get stranded in the mud, and at others cut off by 
the tide. ‘ When his friends came,” Armstrong wrote us, “ they 
dined at an ordinary there used to be. People who had business at 
the wharves in the neighbourhood dined there, and Jimmie’s descrip- 
tions of the company were always humorous.” Mr. Ionides drove 
down once for a dinner-party Whistler gave at his inn: 

“ The landlord and several bargee guests were invited. Du Maurier 
was there also, and after dinner we had songs and sentiments. Jimmie 
proposed the landlord’s health; he felt flattered, but we were in fits 
of laughter. The landlord was very jealous of his wife, who was 
rather inclined to flirt with Jimmie, and the whole speech was chaff 
of a soothing kind that he never suspected.” 

Another and more frequent visitor to Wapping was Serjeant 
Thomas, one of those patrons who recognise the young artist and 
appear when recognition is most needed. He bought drawings and 
prints from Holman Hunt and Legros when they were scarcely known, 
and he helped Millais through difficult days. Whistler had issued 
his French Set of etchings in London in 1859: Twelve Etchings from 
Nature by Fames Abbott Whistler, London. Published by F. A. Whistler, 
At No. 62 Sloane Street (Haden’s house). The price, as in Paris, for 
Artist’s Proofs on India, two guineas. Serjeant Thomas saw the prints, 
got to know Whistler, and arranged to publish them, and also the 
Thames etchings which he sold separately at 39 Old Bond Street, 
where he had opened a shop with his son, Edmund Thomas, as manager. 
1859] 61 


James McNett WHISTLER 


Mr. Percy Thomas, a younger son, has told us that, as a little fellow, 
he often went with his father by boat to Wapping, and that his father 
and brother posed for two of the figures—the third is Whistler—in 
The Little Pool, used as an invitation card. He has also told us that 
much of the printing was done at 39 Old Bond Street, where the family 
lived in the upper part of the house. A press was in one of the small 
rooms, and Whistler would come in the evening, when he happened to 
be in town, to bite and prove his plates. Sometimes he would not 
get to work until half-past ten or eleven. In those days he put his 
plate in a deep bath of acid, keeping to the technical methods of the 
Coast Survey, though it is said that the Coast Survey plates were banked 
up with wax and the acid poured over them. This is supposed to have 
been the method of Rembrandt. Serjeant Thomas, in his son’s words, 
was “ great for port wine,” and he would fill a glass for Whistler, and 
Whistler would place the glass by the bath, and then work a little on 
the plate and then stop to sip the port, and he would say, “ Excellent ! 
Very good indeed!” and they never knew whether he meant the wine 
or the work. And the charm of his manner and his courtesy made it 
delightful to do anything for him. Serjeant Thomas brought Delatre 
from Paris, the only man, he thought, who could print Whistler’s 
etchings as the artist would have printed them himself. ‘‘ Nobody,” 
Ralph Thomas wrote, “‘ has ever printed Mr. Whistler’s etchings with 
\ success except himself and M. Delatre,” and to-day many people are 
of the same opinion. Whistler’s relations with the firm were pleasant 
while they lasted. But they did not last long. Edmund Thomas 
cared less for art than the law, and in the shop he would sit at his desk 
reading his law books, never looking up nor leaving them, unless some- 
one asked the price of a print or drawing. A successful business is not 
run on those lines, and in a few years he gave up art for the law, to his 
great advantage, 


62 [1859 


Tue BEcINNINGS IN LONDON 


CHAPTER IX : THE BEGINNINGS IN LONDON. THE YEARS 
EIGHTEEN FIFTY-NINE TO EIGHTEEN SIXTY-THREE 
CONTINUED. 


WHISTLER, in 1860, devoted more time to painting on the river and 
less to etching, though the Rotherhithe belongs to this year. One 
picture he described in a letter to Fantin. “ Chut! nen parle pas a 
Courbet ” was his warning, as if afraid to trust so good a subject to any- 
one. It was to be a masterpiece, he had painted it three times, and he 
sent a sketch which M. Duret reproduced in his Whistler. M. Duret, 
unable to trace the picture, thought he might never have carried it 
beyond the sketch. But it was finished: the Wapping shown in the 
Academy of 1864, a proof how long Whistler kept his pictures before 
exhibiting them. In 1867 he sent it to the Paris Exhibition. It was 
bought by Mr. Thomas Winans, taken to Baltimore, where it has re- 
mained. Whistler wanted to exhibit it at Goupil’s in 1892, but could 
not get it. Never seen in Europe since 1867, it has been forgotten. 
It was painted from an inn, probably The Angel on the water-side at 
Cherry Gardens which exists to-day, one of a row of old houses with 
overhanging balconies. In the foreground, in a shadowy corner of the 
inn balcony, is a sailor for whom a workman from Greaves’ boat- 
building yard, Chelsea, sat; next, M. Legros; and on the other side 
of M. Legros, with her back turned to the river, the girl with copper- 
coloured hair, Jo, the model for The White Girl and The Little White 
Girl. On the river are the little square-rigged ships that still anchor 
there; on the opposite side is the long line of Wapping warehouses, 
which give the name. Artists feared Jo’s slightly open bodice would 
prevent the picture being hung in the Royal Academy. But Whistler 
insisted, if it was rejected on that account, he would open the bodice 
more and more every year until he was elected and hung it himself. 
He painted The Thames in Ice this year (1860) from the same inn. 
It was called, when first exhibited, The Twenty-fifth of December, 1860, 
on the Thames. For an idle apprentice it was a strange way of spending 
Christmas. Whistler told us that Haden bought it for ten pounds— 
ample pay, Haden said: three pounds for each of the three days 
he spent painting it, anda pound over. To Whistler the pay seemed 
1860] 63 


JAMEs McNeE1LtL WHISTLER 


anything but ample. ‘“‘ You know, my sister was in the house, and 
women have their ideas about things, and I did what she wanted, 
to please her ! ” 

Two other pictures of 1860 are the portrait of Mr. Luke Ionides 
and Ihe Music Room. In both the influence of Courbet is evident. 
The portrait, painted in the Newman Street studio, has the heavy 
handling of The Piano, though much more brilliant. But the other 
picture is a tremendous advance. 

Fantin could not have been more conscientious in rendering the 
life about him as he found it than Whistler in The Music Room ; only, 
the room in the London house, with its gay chintz curtains, has none 
of the sombre simplicity of the interior where Fantin’s sisters sit. 
Fantin’s home had an austerity he made beautiful ; the Hadens’ house 
had colour—Harmony in Green and Rose was Whistler’s later title for 
the picture. He emphasised the gaiety by introducing a strong black 
note in the standing figure, Miss Boot, while the cool light from the 
window falls on “ wonderful little Annie,” in the same white frock 
she wears in The Piano Picture. Mrs. Thynne (Annie Haden) says : 

“‘ T was very young when The Music Room was painted, and beyond 
the fact of not minding sitting, in spite of the interminable length of 
time, I do not know that I can say more. It was a distinctly amusing 
time forme. He was always so delightful and enjoyed the ‘ no lessons ” 
as much as I did. One day in The Morning Call (the first name of 
The Music Room) I did get tired without knowing it, and suddenly 
dissolved into tears, whereupon he was full of the most tender remorse, 
and rushed out and bought me a lovely Russia leather writing set, 
which I am using at this very moment! The actual music-room still 
exists in Sloane Street, though the present owners have enlarged it, 
and the date of the picture must have been ’60 or 61, after his return 
from Paris. It was then he gave me the pencil sketches I lent to the 
London Memorial Exhibition. I had kept them in an album he had 
also brought me from Paris, with my name in gold stamped outside, 
of which I was very proud. We were always good friends, and I have 
nothing all through those early days but the most delightful remem- 
brance of him.” 

This picture is described under three titles: The Morning Call, The 
Music Room, and Harmony tn Green and Rose, The Music Room; the 
64 [1860 


Tue Becinnincs 1N LonpDoN 


present confusion in Whistler’s titles is usually the result of his own 
vagueness. It became the property of Mrs. Réveillon, George Whistler’s 
daughter, and was_carried off to St. Petersburg, never to return to 
London until the exhibition at the Goupil Gallery in 1892. 

It has become the fashion to say that Whistler had not mastered 
his trade and could not use oil paint. These early pictures are techni- 
cally as accomplished as the work of any of his contemporaries. He 
never was taught, few artists are, the elements of his trade, and some 
of his paintings have suffered. The Music Room and The Thames in Ice, 
so far as we can remember, are wonderfully fresh. They were painted 
more directly, more thinly, than the Wapping, in which the paint 
is thickly piled, as in the Piano Picture, which has cracked, no doubt 
the result of his working over it probably on a bad ground. Of two 
pictures painted at the same period, the Wapping is badly cracked, and 
the Thames in Ice is in perfect condition. But this is due to his want 
of knowledge of the chemical properties of paints and mediums. Later, 
he gave great attention to these matters. He kept the Wapping four 
years before he showed it. Though started down the river in 1860, it 
contains a portrait of Greaves’ man, whom he did not see for two or 
three years after. Walter Greaves stated, or allowed to be stated, in 
a preface to the catalogue of his exhibition in May 1911, that he met 
Whistler in the late fifties when Whistler lived in Chelsea and made 
the Thames series of etchings. But the statement was proved to be 
inaccurate, and the preface was withdrawn. We have quoted Greaves 
on several occasions, but, before doing so, we have verified every state- 
ment of importance he made to us, and we first met him some few years 
ago when his memory was clearer and more reliable, and when he 
possessed letters from Whistler which we have seen. 

Mr. Thynne stood in 1860 for the beautiful dry-point Annie Haden, 
in big crinoline and soup-plate hat, the print Whistler told Mr. E. G. 
Kennedy he would choose by which to be remembered. It was the 
year also of the portraits of Axenfeld, Riault, and “ Mr. Mann.” In 
1861 there were more plates on the Upper as well as the Lower Thames. 
Two of the plates of 1861 were published as illustrations by the Junior 
Etching Club in Passages from Modern English Poets, and Whistler 
proved the plates at the press of Day and Son, and met the lad he 
called “ the best professional printer in England,” Frederick Goulding. 
1861] E 65 


James McNeritit WHIsTLER 


Whistler told us that he worked about three weeks on each of the 
Thames plates. He therefore must have spent on dated plates alone 
thirty-six weeks in 1861, leaving but fourteen weeks for other work and 
for play. Some of them are much less elaborate than the Drouet, which, 
Drouet said, was done in five hours, so that it seems difficult to reconcile 
the two statements. But it was about the Black Lion Wharf, one of 
the fullest of detail, that we asked Whistler. We had many discussions 
with him about them. Whistler maintained that they were youthful 
performances, and J. as strongly maintained that that had nothing 
to do with the matter; that he never surpassed the wonderful drawing 
and composition and biting. He insisted that his later work in Venice 
and in Holland was a great development, a great advance, and his final 
answer was: “ Well, you like them more than I do!” But there is 
no doubt that the Thames plates, notably the Black Lion Wharf, have, 
for artistic rendering of inartistic subjects and for perfect biting, never 
been approached. Another thing that astonished J. was that he could 
see such detail and put it on a copper-plate. “ H’m,” was Whistler’s 
comment, “ that’s what they all say.” 

Whistler got to know the Upper Thames when he stayed with Mr. 
and Mrs. Edwin Edwards at Sunbury. Edwards figures in his dry- 
point Encamping with M. W. Ridley, who was Whistler’s first pupil, 
and Traer, Haden’s assistant, not “‘ Freer,” as he has long masqueraded 
in Mr. Wedmore’s catalogue. Ridley also is in The Storm and The 
Guitar-Player. To these visits we owe an etching of Whistler at 
Moulsey, by Edwards. Whistler introduced Fantin, who, in a note for 
1861, refers to the “‘jolies journées chez Edwards a Sunbury.” Mrs. 
Edwards wrote us shortly before her death : 

‘“‘ Whistler often came to see me, turning up always when least 
expected, perhaps driving down in a hansom cab from London. At 
that time there was no railway at Sunbury; Hampton Court three 
miles distant. He might send a line to be met by boat at Hampton 
Court. He was always very eccentric.” 

Doubtless the driving down was an eccentricity. But Whistler 
knew he might see some “ foolish sunset,” or a Nocturne, on the way. 
“We had a large boat with waterproof cover,” Mrs. Edwards added ; 
‘my husband and friends several times went up the river and slept 
in the boat. Whistler went once,” when he did the plate Encamping 
66 [1861 


THE BEcINNINGS IN LONDON 


and possibly Sketching and The Punt, and in Mrs. Edwards’ words, 
*‘ got rheumatism.” It had been his trouble since St. Petersburg. He 
could not risk exposure. 

Whistler, though not settled in London, sent work regularly to 
the Academy, where it was an unfailing shock tothe critics. Heshowed 
his Mére Gérard in 1861. The Atheneum described the picture as 
“‘a fine, powerful-toned, and eminently characteristic study.” The 
Daily Telegraph thought it “far fitter hung over the stove in the 
studio than exhibited at the Royal Academy, though it is replete with 
evidence of genius and study. If Mr. Whistler would leave off using 
mud and clay on his palette and paint cleanly, like a gentleman, we 
should be happy to bestow any amount of praise on him, for he has 
all the elements of a great artist in his composition. But we must 
protest against his soiled and miry ways.” It seemed a good, serious 
study of an old woman and nothing more, when we saw it in the 
London Memorial Exhibition, and the appallingly low level of the 
Academy alone can explain the attention it attracted. 

Whistler was in France in the summer of 1861, painting The Coast of 
Brittany, or Alone with the Tide, which might have been signed by 
Courbet—an arrangement in brown under a cloudy sky, a stretch of 
sand at low tide in the foreground, water-washed rocks against which a 
peasant girl sleeps, a deep bluesea beyond. It was “a beautiful thing,” 
Whistler said years afterwards. At Perros Guirec he made his splendid 
dry-point The Forge. Another print of this year is the rare dry-point 
of Jo, who, for awhile, appeared in Whistler’s work as often as Saskia 
in Rembrandt’s. She was Irish. Her father has been described to us 
as a sort of Captain Costigan, and Jo—Joanna Heffernan, Mrs. Abbott— 
as a woman of next to no education, but of keen intelligence, who, 
before she had ceased to sit to Whistler, knew more about painting 
than many painters, had become well read, and had great charm. 
Her value to Whistler as a model was enormous, and she was an impor- 
tant element in his life during the first London years. She was with 
him in France in 1861-2, going to Paris in the winter to give him sittings 
for the big White Girl, which he painted in a studio in the Boulevard 
des Batignolles hung all in white. There Courbet met her, and. 
looking at the copper-coloured hair, saw beauty in the beautiful. 
He painted her, though perhaps not that winter, as La Belle Irlandaise. 
1862] 67 


James McNeitut WHIsTLER 


and as Fo, femme d’Irlande. Whistler’s study of Jo, Note Blanche, 
lent by Mrs. Sickert to the Paris Memorial Exhibition, was doubtless 
done in 1861, for the technique is like Courbet’s. Drouet remembered 
breakfasts in the studio which Whistler cooked. 

He fell ill before the end of the winter. Miss Chapman says he 
was poisoned by the white lead used in the picture. Her brother, a 
doctor, recommended a journey to the Pyrenees. At Guéthary 
Whistler was nearly drowned when bathing. He wrote to Fantin: 

‘“‘ It was sunset, the sea was very rough, I was caught in the huge 
waves, swallowing gallons of salt water. I swam and I swam, and the 
more I swam the less near I came to the shore. Ah! my dear Fantin, 
to feel my efforts useless and to know people were looking on saying, 
‘ But the Monsieur amuses himself, he must be strong!’ Icry, I scream 
in despair—I disappear three, four times. At last they understand. A 
brave railroad man rushes to me, and is rolled over twice on the sands. 
My model hears the call, arrives at a gallop, jumps in the sea like a 
Newfoundland, manages to catch me by the foot, and the two pull 
me out.” * . 

At Biarritz he painted The Blue Wave, a great sea rolling in and 
breaking on the shore under a fine sky, but quite unlike the Coast of 
Brittany. Whistler painted few pictures in which the composition, 
the arrangement, is more obvious. It is an extraordinary piece of work. 
It has lately been said that he painted this picture after he had seen 
Courbet’s Vague, now in the Louvre. But the Vague was not shown 
until 1870. If there was any influence, it was all the other way. 
At Fuenterrabia Whistler was in Spain, for the only time; “ Spaniards 
from the Opéra-Comique in the street, men in bérets and red blouses, 
children like little Turks.” He wanted to go farther, to Madrid, 
and he urged Fantin to join him. Together they would look at The 
Lances and The Spinners as together they had studied at the Louvre. 
In another letter he promised to describe Velasquez to Fantin, to — 
bring back photographs. Such “ glorious painting ” should be copied. _ 
“* Ab ! mon cher, comme tl adu travailler,” he winds up in his enthusiasm. 
But the journey ended at Fuenterrabia. Fantin could not join him. 
Madrid was put off for another spring, for ever, though the journey 
was for ever being planned anew. 

* See Duret’s Whistler. 
68 [1862 


THE MUSIC ROOM 
HARMONY IN GREEN AND ROSE 


OIL 


In the possession of Colonel F. Hecker 
(See page 64) 


ANNIE HADEN 


+ 02 


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Tue BEcINNINGS IN LONDON 


Whistler sent The White Girl to the Academy of 1862, with The 
Twenty-fifth of December, 1860, on the Thames ; Alone with the Tide ; 
and one etching, Rotherhithe. The White Girl was rejected. The 
two other pictures and the print were accepted, hung, and praised. 
The Atheneum compared the Rotherhithe to Rembrandt. Whistler 
could scarcely be mentioned as an etcher without this comparison ; 
since Rembrandt his were “ the most striking and original ” etchings, 
everyone then said, Mr. W. M. Rossetti being among the first in England 
to say it boldly. Alone with the Tide was approved as “ perfectly 
expressed,” and The Twenty-fifth of December as “ broad and vigorous, 
though perhaps vigour was pushed over the bounds of coarseness to 
become mere dash.” Other work he showed elsewhere was praised. 
The Punt and Sketching, published in Passages from Modern English 
Poets, were singled out for admiration. Thames Warehouses and Black 
Lion Wharf won him recognition as “ the most admirable etcher of 
the present day,” at South Kensington Museum, where in 1862 an 
International Exhibition was held. Whistler had no pictures, but the 
collection of modern continental art was one of the finest ever seen in 
England. 

In nothing had Whistler been so completely himself as in The White 
Girl, and it failed to please. The artist is born to pick and choose, 
and group with science, the elements in Nature that the result may be 
beautiful, he wrote in The Ten o’Clock, and The White Girl was his 
first attempt to conform to a principle no one ever put so clearly into 
words. It was an attempt, we know now, comparing the painting 
to the symphonies and harmonies that came after. But at the time it 
was disquieting in its defiance of modern conventions. It was without 
subject according to Victorian standards, and the bold massing of 
white upon white was more bewildering than the minute detail of the 
Pre-Raphaelites. This summer (1862) the Berners Street Gallery was 
opened, “ with the avowed purpose of placing before the public the 
works of young artists who may not have access to the ordinary 
galleries.” | Maclise, Egg, Frith, Cooper, Poynter forced their way 
in. But the Manager had the courage to exhibit The White Girl, 
‘stating in the catalogue that the Royal Academy had refused it. 
The Atheneum was independent enough to say that it was the most 
prominent picture in the collection, though not the most perfect, for, 
1862] 69 


James McNertt WuistTLeR 


“able as this bizarre production shows Mr. Whistler to be, we are 
certain that in a very few years he will recognize the reasonableness of 
its rejection. It is one of the most incomplete paintings we ever met 
with. A woman ina quaint morning dress of white, with her hair about 
her shoulders, stands alone in the background of nothing in particular. 
But for the rich vigour of the textures, we might conceive this to be 
some old portrait by Zucchero, or a pupil of his, practising in a pro- 
vincial town. ‘The face is well done, but it is not that of Mr. Wilkie 
Collins’ Woman in White.” 

The criticism brought from Whistler his first letter to the press, 
published in the Atheneum, July 5: 


“62 Sloane Street. July 1, 1862. 
ie May I beg to correct an erroneous impression likely to be con- 
firmed in your last number? The Proprietors of the Berners Street 
Gallery have, without my sanction, called my picture ‘ The Woman in 
White” Ihad no intention whatever of illustrating Mr. Wilkie Collins’ 
novel; it so happens, indeed, that I have never read it. My painting 
simply represents a girl dressed in white, standing in front of a white 

curtain.—I am, &c., James WHISTLER.” 


The critics were spared the sting of his wit, but they disapproved 
strongly enough for him to tell his friends that The White Girl enjoyed 


a succes d’exécration. 


A different success awaited his Thames etchings in Paris, where they 


were shown in a dealer’s gallery. Baudelaire saw them and understood, 
as he was the first to understand the work of Manet, Poe, Wagner, 
and many others. He wrote: 

“ Tout récemment, un jeune artiste américain, M. Whistler, exposatt 
4 la galerie Martinet une série d eaux fortes, subtiles, éveillées comme ?1m- 
provisation et Pinspiration, représentant les bords de la Tamtise ; merveil- 
leux fouillis d’agrés, de vergues, de cordages; chaos de brumes, de fourneaux 
et de veins tire-bouchonnées ; poésie profonde et compliquée @une vaste 
capitale.” 

According to Mr, W. M. Rossetti, Whistler soon moved to Queen’s 
Road, Chelsea: ‘“‘ I fancy that the houses in Queen’s Road have been 
much altered since Whistler was there in 1862-63. They were then low 
(say two-storeyed), quite old-fashioned houses, of a cosy, homely 
70 [1862 


Tue BEGINNINGS IN LONDON 


character, with small forecourts. J have a kind of idea that Whistler’s 
house was No. 12, but this is quite uncertain to me.* As my brother 
and I were much in that neighbourhood, to and fro, prior to settling 
down in No. 16 Cheyne Walk, we came into contact with Whistler, who 
every now and then accompanied us on our jaunts. I forget how it was 
exactly that we got introduced to him; possibly by Mr. Algernon 
Swinburne, who was also to be an inmate of No. 16. Either (as I think) 
before meeting Whistler or just about the time we met him, we had seen 
one or two of his paintings. dt the Piano must have been one, and we 
most heartily admired him, and discerned unmistakably that he was 
destined for renown.” 

The friendship may have led to Whistler’s interest in black-and- 
white, for in England it was Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite Brother- 
hood who revolutionised illustration and proved it a dignified and 
serious form of art. The more brilliant of the younger men were 
working for the illustrated magazines, and Whistler found a place 
among them. He made six drawings in 1862. Four appeared in 
Once a Week: The Morning before the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 
Count Burckhardt, The Major’s Daughter, The Relief Fund in Lancashire, 
intended to be used as an illustration to the reprint of an address by 
Tennyson on the subject of the famine in Lancashire, but never written 
because of his illness. To this fund we believe Whistler contributed 
a drawing. The two other illustrations, for The First Sermon, were 
published in Good Words. They were drawn on wood in pencil, pen 
and wash, are full of character, and, in the use of line, are like his 
etchings. They were engraved by the Dalziel Brothers and Joseph 
Swain, and from Mr. Strahan, the publisher of Once a Week, we have 
these additional facts : 

“‘They were arranged for by Edward Dalziel, and I cannot say 
how he came to know the artist or his work, as Mr. Whistler was young 
then, and, as far as I know, had not contributed to any magazine. 


* Not only have the houses been much altered, but the name of the street 
has changed, and Queen’s Road is now Royal Hospital Road. The present 
No. 12 corresponds to Mr. Rossetti’s description, but we think it more likely 
—and he does too—that Whistler lived in one of the little brick cottages of 
Paradise Row. In any case, we doubt if he had more than rooms or lodgings. 
He gave us to understand that the house he took shortly after, in Lindsey 
Row, was his first in London. 


1862] 71 


James McNertt WHIsTLER 


The average price we paid to artists was nine pounds, and we reckoned 
that the same amount had to be paid for engravings. As a matter of 
fact, the sum paid to Mr. Whistler was nine pounds for each drawing.” 

We showed Whistler once The Morning before the Massacre of 
St. Bartholomew. ‘Well, now, not bad, you know—not bad even then! ” 
and he followed, with his expressive little finger, the flowing line, 
pointing to the hand lost in the draperies. This and The Major’s 
Daughter were the two he preferred, and when J. was preparing The 
History of Modern Illustration Whistler picked them out as “ very pretty 
ones” that should be reproduced, though, if but a single example 
of his work could be used, he wished The Morning before the Massacre 
to be selected, for it was “as delicate as an etching, and altogether 
characteristic and personal.” Count Burckhardt he did not care for, 
insisting that he would rather not be represented if this were to be the 
only example in the book. “It was never a favourite,” he added. 

The four drawings of Once a Week were reprinted in Thornbury’s 
Legendary Ballads, 1876. Thornbury implied that the drawings were 
made for the book, and thought that “the startling drawings by 
Mr. Whistler prove his singular power of hand, strong artistic feeling, 
and daring manner.” 

Our copy belonged to George Augustus Sala. On the margin of 
The Morning before the Massacre he wrote: ‘‘ Jemmy Whistler.—Clever, 
sketchy, and incomplete, like everything he has done. A loaf of 
excellent, fine flour, but slack-baked.” So Sala believed in 1883, and 
it is typical of the time. 

Another important work of 1862 was The Last of Old Westminster. 
Mr. Arthur Severn knows more about it than anyone, as his account to 
us explains : “ On my return from Rome to join my brother in his rooms 
in Manchester Buildings, on the Thames at Westminster Bridge (where 
the New Scotland Yard now is), I found Whistler beginning his picture 
of Westminster Bridge. My brother had given him permission to use 
our sitting-room, with its bow-windows looking over the river and 
towards the bridge. He was always courteous and pleasant in manner, 
and it was interesting to see him at work. The bridge was in perspective, 
still surrounded with piles, for it had only just been finished. It was 
the piles with their rich colour and delightful confusion that took his 
fancy, not the bridge, which hardly showed. He would look steadily 
72 7 [1862 


THE Becinnincs 1n Lonpon 


at a pile for some time, then mix up the colour, then, holding his brush 
quite at the end, with no mahlstick, make a downward stroke and the 
pile was done. I remember his looking very carefully at a hansom 
cab that had pulled up for some purpose on the bridge, and in a few 
strokes he got the look of it perfectly. He was long over the picture, 
sometimes coming only once a week, and we got rather tired of it. 
One day some friends came to see it. He stood it against a table in 
an upright position for them to see; it suddenly fell on its face, to my 
brother’s disgust, as he had just got a new carpet. Luckily Whistler’s 
sky was pretty dry, and I don’t think the picture got any damage, and 
the artist was most good-natured about my brother’s anxiety lest the 
carpet should have suffered.” 

The Last of Old Westminster was ready for the Academy of 1863, 
to which it was sent with six prints: Weary, Old Westminster Bridge, 
Hungerford Bridge, Monsieur Becquet, The Forge, The Pool. The dignity 
of composition in the picture and the vigour of handling impressed 
all who saw it in the London Memorial Exhibition, though they had 
to regret its shocking condition, cracked from end to end. It failed to 
impress Academicians in 1863, and was badly hung, as were the prints, 
reproductive work being then, as now, preferred to original etching. 

The W bite Girl, after its Berners Street success, was sent by Whistler 
to the Salon. He took it to Paris, to Fantin’s studio, there having it 
unrolled and framed. It is hard to say why the strongest work of the 
strongest young men was rejected from the Salon of 1863. Fantin, 
Legros, Manet, Bracquemond, Jongkind, Harpignies, Cazin, Jean-Paul 
Laurens, Vollon, Whistler were refused. It was a scandal; 1859 was 
nothing to it. The town was in an uproar that reached the ears of 
the Emperor. Martinet, the dealer, offered to show the rejected 
pictures in his gallery. But before this was arranged, Napoleon III 
ordered that a Salon des Refusés should be held in the same building 
as the official Salon, the Palais del Industrie. The decree was published 
in the Moniteur for April 24, 1863. The notice was issued by the 
Directeur-Général of the Imperial Museums, and the exhibition opened 
on May 15. ‘The success was as great as the scandal. The exhibition 
was the talk of the town, it was caricatured as the Exposition des 
Comiques, and parodied as the Club des Refusés at the Variétés ; every- 
one rushed to the galleries. The rooms were crowded by artists, be- 
1863] 73 


James McNeiLtt WHISTLER 


cause, in the midst of much no doubt weak and foolish, the best work of 
the day was shown ; by the public, because of the stir the affair made. 
The public laughed with the idea that it was a duty to laugh, and 
because the critics said that never was succés pour rire better deserved. 
Zola described in L’Guvre the gaiety and cruelty of the crowd, con- 
vulsed and hysterical in front of La Dame en Blanc. Hamerton wrote 
in the Fine Arts Quarterly : 

“The hangers must have thought her particularly ugly, for they 
have given her a sort of place of honour, before an opening through 
which all pass, so that nobody misses her. I watched several parties, 
to see the impression The Woman in White made on them. They all 
stopped instantly, struck with amazement. This for two or three 
seconds, then they always looked at each other and laughed. Here, 
for once, I have the happiness to be quite of the popular way of think- 
ing.” ‘ 

On the other hand, Fernand Desnoyers, who wrote a pamphlet on 
the Salon des Refusés, thought that Whistler was “le plus spirite des 
peintres,” and the painting the most original that had passed before 
the jury of the Salon, altogether remarkable, at once simple and fantas- 
tic, the portrait of a spirit, a medium, though of a beauty so peculiar 
that the public did not know whether to think it beautiful or ugly. Paul 
Mantz considered it the most important picture in the exhibition, full 
of knowledge and strange charm, and his article in the Gazette des 
Beaux-Arts is the more interesting because he described the picture as _ 
a Symphonie du Blanc some years before Whistler called it so, and 
pointed out that it carried on French tradition, for, a hundred years 
earlier, painters had shown in the Salon studies of white upon white. 

The picture hardly explained the sensation of its first appearance 
when we saw it with Miss Alexander, the Mother, Carlyle, The Fur 
Facket, and Irving in the London Memorial Exhibition. But it seemed 
revolutionary enough in the sixties, to become the clou of the Salon des 
Refusés, though nothing was further from Whistler’s intention. It 
eclipsed Manet’s Déjeuner sur Vherbe, then called Le Bain. 

Whistler was in Amsterdam with Legros, looking at Rembrandt 
with delight, at Van der Helst with disappointment, etching Amsterdam 
from the Tolbuis, no doubt hunting for old paper and adding to his 
collection of blue and white, when the news came of the reception of 
74. [1863 


Tue BEGINNINGS IN LONDON 


his picture in Paris, and he wrote to Fantin that he longed to be there 
andinthemovement. It wasasatisfaction that the picture, slighted in 
London, should be honoured in Paris. He was all impatience to know 
what was said in the Café de Bade, the café of Manet, and by the critics. 

To add to his triumph in Paris, official honours were coming to 
him in Holland and England. Some of his etchings were in an exhibi- 
tion at The Hague, though he said he did not know how they got there, 
and he was given one of three gold medals awarded to foreigners—his 
first medal. Though atrociously hung at the Academy, ‘his prints 
were honoured at the British Museum, where twelve were bought for 
the Print Room this year. 

The excitement did not keep him from work, to which, as he wrote 
to Fantin, wandering was a drawback. He felt the need of his studio, 
of “the familiar all about him.” The “ familiar ” he loved best was 
in London, and when he returned he began to look for a house of his 
own. It was fortunate for him that his mother was in England. At 
the beginning of the Civil War, in which Whistler took the keenest 
interest as a patriot and a “ West Point man,” she had been in Rich- 
mond with her son William, serving as surgeon in the Confederate Army, 
had run the blockade, and come to join her other children in London. 

Whistler no longer made the Hadens’ house his home. The rela- 
tions of the brothers-in-law had become strained, both being of strong 
character. Haden had had much to put up with, while Whistler, the 
artist, resented the criticism of Haden, the surgeon. One story we 
have from Whistler explains the situation, and though he never gave a 
date, it can be told here. Haden was the schoolmaster Whistler found 
him when they first met ; one’s older relatives have a way of forgetting 
one can grow up. Once, when Whistler had done something more 
enormous than ever in Haden’s eyes, he was summoned to the work- 
room upstairs, and lectured until he refused to listen to another word. 
He started down the four flights of stairs, with Haden close behind, 
still lecturing. At last the front door was reached. And then: 
“‘ Oh, dear,” said Whistler, “ I’ve left my hat upstairs, and now we 
have got to go all through this again!” As there was no further 
question of Whistler living with the Hadens, it was decided that he 
and his mother should live together, and some of his most delightful 
years were those that followed. _ 

1863] 75 


James McNeitt WuisTLER 


CHAPTER X: CHELSEA DAYS. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN 
SIXTY-THREE TO EIGHTEEN SIXTY-SIX. 


WuIsTLERr’s first house in London was No. 7 Lindsey Row, Chelsea, 
now 101 Cheyne Walk. It adjoins the old palace of Lord Lindsey, 
which still stands, the original building divided into several houses, 
stuccoed and modernised, much of its stateliness gone, though the 
spacious stairway and part of the panelling have been preserved. 
Whistler’s was a three-storey house, with a garden in front, humble 
compared with the palaces Academicians were building. ‘“ All these 
artists complain of nothing but the too great prosperity of the profession 
in these days,” Hamerton wrote to his wife; “‘ they tell me an artist’s 
life is a princely one now.” But Whistler lived his own life, and from 
his windows he could paint what he wanted. Only the road separated 
the house from the river; opposite was Battersea Church and a group 
of factory chimneys; old Battersea Bridge stretched across, and at 
night he could see the lights of Cremorne. 

At the end of the Row the boat-builder Greaves lived. He had 
worked in Chelsea for years. He had rowed Turner about on the river, 
and his two sons were to row Whistler. One of the sons, Mr. Walter 
Greaves, has told us that Mrs. Booth, a big, hard, coarse Scotchwoman, 
was always with Turner when he came for a boat. Turner would 
ask Greaves what kind of a day it was going to be, and if Greaves 
answered “ Fine,” he would get Greaves to row them across to Battersea 
Church, or to the fields, now Battersea Park. If Greaves was doubtful 
Turner would say: “ Well, Mrs. Booth, we won’t go far,” and after- 
wards for the sons—boys at the time—Turner in their memory was 
overshadowed by her. They had also known Martin, the painter of big 
Scriptural machines, whose house was in the middle of the Row. It 
had a balcony, and on fine moonlight nights, or nights of dramatic 
skies, Greaves or one of the sons would knock him up, and keep on 
knocking until they saw the old man in his nightcap on the balcony, 
where he would get to work and sketch the sky until daylight. Greaves 
remembered, too, Brunel, who built the Great Eastern, living at the 
end of the Row. Of other associations, dating a couple of centuries 
before, the little Moravian graveyard at the back was a reminder, 
76 [1863 


1 
; 


THE WHITE GIRL 
SYMPHONY IN WHITE. NO. I 


OIL 


In the possession of J. H. Whittemore, Esq. 
(Sez page 67) 


jo 


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(See page 68) 


CHELSEA Days 


for Lindsey Palace was one of the first refuges of Zinzendorf and the 
Brotherhood. A hundred years or so later Mrs. Gaskell was born there. 
The Row, indeed, was a place of history. But Whistler was to make it 
more famous. 

The two Greaves, Walter and Harry, painted, and Whistler let 
them work with and for him. We have often heard him speak of them 
as his pupils. From them he learned to row. “ He taught us to 
paint, and we taught him the waterman’s jerk,” Mr. Walter Greaves 
says. Whistler would start with them in the twilight, Albert Moore 
sometimes his companion, and they would stay on the river for hours, 
often all night, lingering in the lights of Cremorne, drifting into the 
shadows of the bridge. Or else he was up with the dawn, throwing 
pebbles at their windows to wake them and make them come and pull 
him up or down stream. At night, on the river and at Cremorne, he 
was never without brown paper and black and white chalk, with which 
he made his notes for the Nocturnes and the seemingly simple, but really 
complicated, firework pictures. In the Gardens it was easy to put 
down what he wanted under the lamps. On the river he had to trust to 
his memory, only noting the reflections in white chalk. 

Walter Greaves, in his exhibition of 1911, made the statement, or 
allowed it to be made, that before he and his brother knew Whistler, they 
were “ painting pictures of the Thames and Cremorne Gardens, both day 
and night effects.” This statement Mr. Greaves was unable to sub- 
stantiate by dates and facts, and as other dates and facts given in his 
catalogue were wrong, little reliance can be placed upon it. He and his 
brother were Whistler’s pupils, and they worked for Whistler for many 
years, helping him, at any rate until after The Peacock Room. Whistler 
naturally wished to control his pupils in their work as any other master 
would, as he controlled and directed the work of Mr. and Mrs. Clifford 
Addams, his last pupils. He also did his best to prevent Mr. Walter 
Greaves and his brother from appropriating his subjects, which letters 
from Whistler to Greaves prove was exactly what they were doing. 
They were to carry on his tradition, and this included his methods 
and even at times his colours which they used, while Whistler as 
undoubtedly worked on their canvases and plates as he worked on 
those of other pupils at later dates. But the statement that he refused 
to allow them to exhibit is untrue, for on the few occasions when we 
1863] ; 77 


James McNeitu WHIsTLER 


are able to find that Greaves did exhibit, it was because Whistler, in 
his generosity, got the pictures hung. In his recent exhibition Greaves 
showed a painting called Passing under Old Battersea Bridge, signed 
and dated 1862, and he stated that he had exhibited it in the Inter- 
national Exhibition at South Kensington of that year. No other 
picture we have seen by him has any such date or signature on it, and 
his statement that it was in the International Exhibition of 1862 
has been proved false. It is now admitted that he did not show until 
1873. There are two distinct qualities of work in the picture which 
must be the work either of two people or of two periods. The piers 
of the bridge are hard and tight, the background resembles Whistler’s 
work of years later, for neither Whistler nor Greaves had painted a 
Nocturne in that manner at the time. Nevertheless, these misstate- 
ments of Greaves were used by critics all over the world to belittle 
Whistler. ; 

At one time, master and pupils attended a life class held in the even- 
ing by M. Barthe, a Frenchman, in Limerston Street, not far from the 
Row. Mr. J. E. Christie was another student, and from him we have 
the following account : 

“Whistler was not a regular attender, but came occasionally, and 
always accompanied by two young men—brothers—Greaves by name. 
They simply adored Whistler, and were not unlike him in appearance, 
owing to an unconscious imitation of his dress and manner. It was 
amusing to watch the movements of the trio when they came into the 
studio (always late). The curtain that hung in front of the door would 
suddenly be pulled back by one of the Greaves, and a trim, prim little 
man, with a bright, merry eye, would step in with ‘ Good evening,’ 
cheerfully said to the whole studio. After a second’s survey, while 
taking off his gloves, he would hand his hat to the other brother, who 
hung it up carefully as if it were a sacred thing, then he would wipe 
his brow and moustache with a spotless handkerchief, then in the most 
careful way he arranged his materials, and sat down. Then, having 
imitated in a general way the preliminaries, the two Greaves sat down on 
either side of him. There was a sort of tacit understanding that his 
and their studies should not be subjected to our rude gaze. I, however, 
saw, with the tail of my eye, as it were, that Whistler made small draw- 
ings on brown paper with coloured chalks, that the figure (always a 
78 [1863 


CHELSEA Days 


female figure) would be about four inches long, that the drawing was 
bold and fine, and not slavishly like the model. The comical part was 
that his satellites didn’t draw from the model at all, that I saw, but sat 
looking at Whistler’s drawing and copying that as far as they could. 
He never entered into the conversation, which was unceasing, but 
occasionally rolled a cigarette and had a few whiffs, the Greaves 
brothers always requiring their whiffs at the same time. The trio 
packed up, and left before the others always.” 

Sometimes in the evening Whistler, with his mother, would go to 
the Greaves’ house after dinner, and work there. Often he sent in 
dessert, that they might enjoy and talk over it together. Then he 
would bring out his brown paper and chalks and make studies of the 
family and of himself, or sketches of pictures he had seen, working 
until midnight and after. In those days he never went to bed until 
he had drawn a portrait of himself, he told us. Many of the portraits 
are in existence. The sister was an accomplished musician, and 
Whistler delighted in music, though he was not critical, for he was 
known to call the passing hurdy-gurdy into his front garden, and have 
it ground under his windows. Occasionally the brothers played so that 
Whistler might dance. He was always full of drolleries and fun. He 
would imitate a man sawing, or two men fighting at the door so cleverly 
that Mrs. Greaves never ceased to be astonished when he walked into the 
room alone and unhurt. He delighted in American mechanical toys, 
and his house was full of Japanese dolls. One great doll, dressed like a 
man, he would take with him not only to the Greaves’, but to dinners 
at Little Holland House, where the Prinseps then lived, and to other 
houses, where he put it through amazing performances. 

Dante Gabriel Rossetti was, by this time, settled in Tudor House 
(now Queen’s House), not far from Lindsey Row, and Swinburne and 
George Meredith were living with him. Mr. W. M. Rossetti came 
for two or three nights every week, and Frederick Sandys, Charles 
Augustus Howell, William Bell Scott, and, several years later, Mr. 
Theodore Watts-Dunton were constant visitors. 

For Rossetti Whistler had a genuine affection, and, in his early 
enthusiasm, wrote of him as “ une grand artiste”? to Fantin. But 
later his enthusiasm did not blind him. ‘‘ A charming fellow, the only 
white man in all that crowd of painters,” he assured us ; “not an artist, 
1863] 79 


James McNeritt WuisTLer 


you know, but charming and a gentleman.” Mr. Watts-Dunton says 
that Rossetti got tired of Whistler after awhile, and considered him 
a brainless fellow, who had no more than a malicious quick wit at the 
expense of others, and no genuine philosophy or humour. But Whistler 
never realised any change in Rossetti’s feelings towards him. 

It was inevitable that Whistler and Rossetti should disagree in 
matters of art. Whistler asked Rossetti why he did not frame his 
sonnets. Rossetti thought that the “ new French School,” in which 
Whistler had been trained, was “ simply putrescence and decomposi- 
tion.” It is said that Rossetti influenced Whistler. Whistler influ- 
enced him as much. They influenced each other in the choice of 
models, in a certain luxuriance of type and the manner of presenting 
it, an influence which was superficial and transitory. 

Upon many other subjects they agreed. Rossetti shared Whistler’s 
delight in drollery and his love of the fantastic. No. one understood 
better than Whistler why Rossetti filled his house and garden with 
strange beasts. It was from Whistler we heard of the peacock and 
the gazelle, who fought until the peacock was left standing desolate, 
with his tail strewed upon the ground. From Whistler, too, we had 
the story of the bull of Bashan, bought at Cremorne, and tied to a 
stake in the garden, and Rossetti would come every day and talk to him, 
until once the bull got so excited that he pulled up the stake and made 
for Rossetti, who went tearing round and round a tree, a little fat 
person with coat-tails flying, finally, by a supreme effort, rushing up 
the garden steps just in time to slam the door in the bull’s face. Rossetti 
called his man and ordered him to tie up the bull, but the man, who had 
looked out for the menagerie, who had gone about the house with pea- 
cocks and other creatures under his arms, who had rescued armadilloes 
from irate neighbours, who had captured monkeys from the tops of 
chimneys, struck when it came to tying up a bull of Bashan on the 
rampage, and gave a month’s warning. From Whistler also we first 
had the story of the wombat, bought at Jamrach’s by Rossetti for its 
name. Whistler was dining at Tudor House, and the wombat was 
brought on the table with coffee and cigars, while Meredith talked 
brilliantly, and Swinburne read aloud passages from the Leaves of Grass. 
But Meredith was witty as well as brilliant, and the special target of his 
wit was Rossetti, who, as he had invited two or three of his patrons, 
80 [1863 


CHELSEA Days 


did not appreciate the jest. The evening ended less amiably than it 
began, and no one thought of the wombat until late, and then it 
had disappeared. It was searched for high and low. Days passed, 
weeks passed, months passed, and there was no wombat. It was re- 
gretted, forgotten. Long afterwards Rossetti, who was not much of a 
smoker, got out the box of cigars he had not touched since that dinner. 
He opened it. Not a cigar was left, but there was the skeleton of the 
wombat. 

Whistler and Rossetti also agreed about many of the group who 
met at Tudor House, though eventually Whistler felt what appeared to 
him the disloyalty of Swinburne and Burne-Jones. He was never, at 
any time, so intimate with Burne-Jones as with Swinburne, who often 
came to the house in Lindsey Row, not only for Whistler’s sake, but out 
of affection for Whistler’s mother. Miss Chapman tells us that Swin- 
burne was once taken ill there suddenly, and Mrs. Whistler nursed him 
till he was well. Miss Chapman also remembers Swinburne sitting 
at Mrs. Whistler’s feet, and saying to her: ‘“‘ Mrs. Whistler, what has 
happened? It used to be Algernon!” Mrs. Whistler, who had 
accepted Whistler’s friends and their ways, said quietly, “‘ You have not 
been to see us for a long while, you know. If you come as you did, 
it will be Algernon again.” And he came, and the friendship lasted 
until the eighties, when he published the article in the Fortnightly 
Review which Whistler could not forgive. 

Meredith wrote us of these Chelsea days: “ I knew Whistler and 
never had a dissension with him, though merry bouts between us 
were frequent. When I went to live in the country, we rarely met. 
He came down to stay with me once. He was a lively companion, 
never going out of his way to take offence, but with the springs in him 
prompt for the challenge. His tales of his student life in Paris, and 
of one Ernest, with whom he set forth on a holiday journey with next 
to nothing in his purse, were zmpayable.” 

Quarrels and distrust never made Whistler deny the charm of 
Charles Augustus Howell, remembered for the part he played in the 
lives of some of the most distinguished people of his generation. 
Who he was, where he came from, nobody knew. He was supposed 
to be associated with high, but nameless, personages in Portugal, 
and sent by them on a secret mission to England: he was said to 
1863] ? F 81 


James McNeitit WHIsTLER 


have been involved in the Orsini conspiracy, and obliged to fly for 
his life across the Channel. According to Mr. E. T. Cook, he was 
descended from Boabdil il Chico, though Rossetti called him “ the 
cheeky.” Mr. Cook says that in his youth, as he used to tell, he 
had supported his family by diving for treasure, and had lived in 
Morocco as the Sheik of a Tribe. But Ford Madox Brown described 
him as the Miinchausen of the Pre-Raphaelite circle. The unquestion- 
able fact is that he was a man of great personal charm and unusual 
business capacity. Mr. W. M. Rossetti has written of him: “ As a 
salesman—with his open manner, winning address, and his exhaustless 
gift of amusing talk, not innocent of high colouring and of actual 
blague—Howell was unsurpassable.” 

He was secretary to Ruskin; he was Rossetti’s man of affairs ; 
he became Whistler’s, though on a less definite basis. He appears in 
published reminiscences as the magnificent prototype of the author’s 
agent. His talk was one of his recommendations to both Rossetti 
and Whistler. Rossetti rejoiced in Howell’s “ Niagara of lies,” and 
immortalised them : 


“* There’s a Portuguese person called Howell, 
Who lays on hts lies with a trowel ; 
When I goggle my eyes, 
And start with surprise, 
Tis at the monstrous big lies told by Howell.” 


Whistler described him as “ the wonderful man, the genius, the 
Gil Blas-Robinson Crusoe hero out of his proper time, the creature 
- of top-boots and plumes, splendidly flamboyant, the real hero of the 
Picaresque novel, forced by modern conditions into other adventures, 
and along other roads.” 

Whistler gave Howell credit for more than picturesqueness. He 
had the instinct for beautiful things, Whistler said: “ He knew them 
and made himself indispensable by knowing them. He was of the 
greatest service to Rossetti; he helped Watts to sell his pictures 
and raise his prices; he acted as artistic adviser to Mr. Howard, 
Lord Carlisle. He had the gift of intimacy; he was at once a friend, 
on closest terms of confidence. He introduced everybody to every- 
82 [1863 


CHELSEA Days 


body else, he entangled everybody with everybody else, and it was easier 
to get involved with Howell than to get rid of him.” 

Many years passed before there was any wish on Whistler’s part to 
get rid of him. He was soon as frequent a visitor at Lindsey Row 
as at Tudor House. For a time he lived at Putney, and Whistler 
used to take his morning pull up the river to breakfast with him. Of 
none of the Rossetti group did Whistler so often talk to us as of Howell, 
telling us his adventures—adventures in pursuit of old furniture and 
china until he was known to, and loved and hated by, every pawnbroker 
in London, and seemed to spend all his time with rare and beautiful 
things; adventures with creditors and bailiffs: once his collection of 
blue pots saved by a device only Howell could have invented, forty 
blue pots carried off in forty four-wheelers to the law-courts, where 
he was complimented by the judge and awarded heavy damages by 
the jury ; adventures as vestryman, giving teas to hundreds of school- 
children ; adventures at Selsea Bill, where three cottages were turned 
into a house for himself and he swaggered in the village as a great 
personage, finding an occupation in stripping the copper from an old 
wreck that had been there for years and possibly selling it to etchers ; 
adventures ending eventually in The Paddon Papers, of which there will 
be something to say when the date of their publication is reached. 

Frederick Sandys’ work never interested Whistler, but Sandys 
the man was a delight to him, though the two lost sight of each other 
for many years. Sandys was usually without a penny in his pocket, 
but he faced the situation with calm and swagger. Accidents never 
separated him from his white waistcoat, though he might have to carry 
it himself to the laundry, or get his model, “ the little girl ” he called 
her, to carry it for him. You were always meeting them with the 
brown-paper parcel, Whistler said, and at the nearest friend’s house 
he would stop for five minutes and emerge from it splendid in a clean 
waistcoat. In money matters he reckoned like a Rothschild. It was 
always, “ Huh! five hundred,” that he wanted. Late one afternoon, 
as Whistler was going into Rossetti’s, he met Sandys coming out 
unusually depressed. He stopped Whistler : 

“Do, do try and reason with Gabriel, huh! He is most thoughtless. 
He says I must go to America, and I must have five hundred, huh, 
and go! But, if I could go, huh, I could stay!” 

1863] 83 


James McNeitt WuisTLER 


Once Whistler, Sandys, and Rossetti are said to have gone to Win- 
chelsea with W. G. Wills, Irving, and Alfred Calmour, from whom the 
story comes. Whistler and Rossetti wanted to see a beautiful old 
house. A grumpy old man lived in it, but Irving warned them that 
he would probably ask them all to dinner. Rossetti said they must 
refuse, he hated dining with strangers; Whistler was sure the wine 
would be bad, Sandys as certain they would be bored by infernal chatter. 
But they went to the house. Whistler knocked. The servant opened. 
Whistler asked him to tell his master that “* Mr. Whistler and Mr. Ros- 
setti and Mr. Irving wish to see the place.” A rough voice was heard : 
“Shut the door, Roger, I don’t want these damned show people 
stealing my silver.” Whistler and Rossetti were furious, and thought 
they should demand an apology. “He thinks we are confounded 
actors,” Whistler said. ‘ My dear James, he’s never heard of you!” 
was Irving’s comment. The only drawback to the story is that we 
doubt if Whistler knew Irving until after he had ceased to see anything 
of Rossetti and Sandys. 

Whistler got to know other friends of Rossetti’s, and he drifted to 
Ford Madox Brown’s, in Fitzroy Square: *‘ Once in a long while I would 
take my gaiety, my sunniness, to Madox Brown’s receptions. And 
there were always the most wonderful people—the Blinds, Swinburne, 
anarchists, poets and musicians, all kinds and sorts, and, in an inner 
room, Rossetti and Mrs. Morris sitting side by side in state, being 
worshipped, and, fluttering round them, Howell with a broad red 
ribbon across his shirt-front, a Portuguese decoration hereditary in 
the family.” 

According to his grandson, Mr. Ford Madox Hueffer, Ford Madox 
Brown thought so much of Whistler’s work that once, knowing Whistler 
wanted money, he sent round among his friends a circular praising 
Whistler’s etchings and urging their purchase. 

Whistler shared Rossetti’s interest in the spiritual manifestations 
that, for several years, agitated the circle at Tudor House. He told 
us once of the strange things that happened when he went to séances 
at Rossetti’s with Jo, and also when he and Jo tried the same things in — 
his studio, and a cousin from the South, long dead, talked to him and 
told him much that no one else could have known. He believed, but — 
he gave up the séances when they threatened to become engrossing, — 
84 [1863 — 


(89 advd 22S) 
*bsq ‘odog *y “y jo uolssessod oy} ul 


T10 


HAVM ANTd AHL 


THE FORGE 


G. 68 


DRY-POINT. 


(See page 67) 


CHELSEA Days 


for he felt that he would be obliged to sacrifice to them the work he 
had to do in the world. 

The chief bond between Whistler and Rossetti was their love for 
blue and white and Japanese prints. Whistler was in Paris in 1856, 
when Bracquemond “ discovered ” Japan in a little volume of Hokusai 
used for packing china, and rescued by Delatre, the printer. It 
passed into the hands of Laveille, the engraver, and from him 
Bracquemond obtained it. After that, Bracquemond had the book 
always by him; and when in 1862 Madame Desoye, who, with her 
husband, had lived in Japan, opened a shop under the arcades of the 
Rue de Rivoli, the enthusiasm spread to Manet, Fantin, Tissot, Jacque- 
mart and Solon, Baudelaire and the De Goncourts. Rossetti was 
supposed to have made it the fashion. But the fashion in Paris began 
before Rossetti owned his first blue pot or his first colour-print. 
Whistler brought the knowledge and the love of the art to London. 
“Tt was he who invented blue and white in London,” Mr. Murray 
Marks assured us, and Mr. W. M. Rossetti was as certain that his brother 
was inspired by Whistler, who bought not only blue and white, but 
sketch-books, colour-prints, lacquers, kakemonos, embroideries, screens. 
“Tn his house in Chelsea, facing Battersea Bridge,’”’ Mr. Severn writes, 
““he had lovely blue and white, Chinese and Japanese.”” The only 
decorations, except the harmony of colour, were the prints on the walls, 
a flight of Japanese fans in one place, in another shelves of blue and 
white. People, copying him, stuck up fans anywhere, and hung plates 
from wires. Whistler’s fans were arranged for colour and line. His 
decorations bewildered people even more than the work of the new 
firm of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co. The Victorian artist 
covered his walls with tapestry, filled his studio with costly things, 
and made the public measure beauty by price, a fact overlooked by 
Whistler, but never by Morris. 

Rossetti joined in the hunt for blue and white. Henry Treffy Dunn, 
in his Recollections of Rossetti, whose assistant he was, writes that Ros- 
setti and Whistler “‘ each tried to outwit the other in picking up the 
choicest pieces of blue to be met with ”; that both were for ever hunt- 
ing for “ Long Elizas,” a name in which Mr. W. M. Rossetti thought 
“* possibly a witticism of Whistler’s may be detected.” Howell rushed 
in and met with the most astounding experiences and adventures. A 
1863] 85 


James McNerLt WHISTLER 


little shop in the Strand was one of their favourite haunts, another was 
near London Bridge where a Japanese print was given away with a 
pound of tea. Farmer and Rogers had an Oriental warehouse in Regent 
Street. The manager, Mr. Lazenby Liberty, afterwards opened one on 
the other side of the street, and here, too, Whistler went, introduced to 
Mr. Liberty by Rossetti. Mr. Liberty rendered him many a service, 
and visited him to the last. Mr. Murray Marks imported blue and white, 
and he has told us how the fever spread from Whistler and Rossetti 
to the ever-anxious collector. Rossetti asked Mr. Marks if he knew 
anything about blue and white. Mr. Marks said yes; he could get 
Rossetti a shipload if he chose. Mr. Marks often ran over to Holland, 
where blue and white was common and cheap, and he picked up a lot, 
offering it to Rossetti for fifty pounds. Rossetti happened to be hard up 
and could not afford it. But he came with Mr. Huth, who bought as 
much as Rossetti could not take, and the rage for it began in England, 
Sir Henry Thompson, among others, commencing to collect. The rivalry 
between Whistler and Rossetti lasted for several years, until Rossetti, 
ill and broken, hardly saw his friends, and until Mr. Marks, in the early 
seventies, bought back from Whistler and Rossetti all he had sold them. 


CHAPTER XI: CHELSEA DAYS. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN 
SIXTY-THREE TO EIGHTEEN SIXTY-SIX CONTINUED. 


In Whistler’s correspondence with Fantin between 1860 and 1865, 
published in part by M. Bénédite in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts (1905), 
it can be seen that he was outgrowing the influence of Courbet, and 
that his reaction against realism was bitter. In his revolt he deliber- 
ately built up subjects that had nothing to do with life as he knew it, 
and he borrowed the motives from Japan. 

It was in the studio at No. 7 Lindsey Row—no huge, gorgeous, 
tapestry-hung, bric-d-brac crowded hall, but a little second storey, 
or English first floor, back room—that the Japanese pictures were 
painted. The method was a development of his earlier work. The 
difference was in the subjects. He did not conceal his “ machinery.” 
The Lange Leitzen, The Gold Screen, The Balcony, the Princesse du Pays 
de la Porcelaine were endeavours to render a beauty he had discovered ~ 
86 [1868 


CHELSEA Days 


which was unknown in Western life. There was no attempt at the 
“learning ” of Tadema or the “ morality ” of Holman Hunt. Whistler’s 
models were not Japanese. The lady of The Lange Leizen sits on a 
chair as she never would have sat in the land from which her costume 
came, and the pots and trays and flowers around her are in a profusion 
never seen in the houses of Tokio or Canton. In The Gold Screen pose 
and arrangement are equally inappropriate. The Princesse, in her 
trailing robes, is as little Japanese. When he left the studio and took 
his canvas to the front of the house and painted The Balcony, though 
he clothed the English models in Eastern dress and gave them Eastern 
instruments to play upon, and placed them before Japanese screens 
and Anglo-Japanese railings, their background was the Thames with 
the chimneys of Battersea. We have heard of a Chinese bamboo 
tack he used for these railings, though some remember it as a studio 
property made from his design. Nothing save the beauty of the 
detail mattered to Whistler. It was not the real Japan he wanted 
to paint, but his idea of it, just as Rembrandt painted his idea of the 
Holy Land. 

The titles he afterwards found for these pictures are Purple and 
Rose, Caprice in Purple and Gold, Harmony in Flesh Colour and Green, 
Rose and Silver. Harmony was what he sought, though no Dutchman 
surpassed their delicacy of detail, truth of texture, intricacy of pattern. 
And yet we are conscious in them of artificial structure as in none of 
his other work; the models do not live in their Japanese draperies ; 
Eastern detail is out of place on the banks of the Thames; the device 
is too obvious. 

The Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine is the portrait of Miss 
Christine Spartali, daughter of the Greek Consul-General in London, 
whom Whistler met at Ionides’, and to whose dinners and parties 
he often went.. There were two daughters, Christine (Countess Ed- 
mond de Cahen) and Marie (Mrs. W. J. Stillman), both beautiful. 
Whistler and Rossetti were struck by their beauty, and Whistler 
asked the younger sister, Christine, to sit to him. Mrs. Stillman, 
who always accompanied her, has told us the story of the picture. 
Before they came to the studio Whistler had his scheme prepared. 
The Japanese robe was ready, the rug and screen were in place, and 
he posed her at once. There are a number of small studies and sketches 
1863] 87 


James McNertt WuisTLer 


in oil and pastel that show he knew what he wanted. She sat twice 
a week during the winter of 1863-64. At first the work went quickly, 
then it began to drag. Whistler often rubbed it out just as she thought 
it finished, and day after day she returned to find that everything 
was to be done over again. The parents got tired, but not the two 
girls. Mrs. Stillman remembers that Whistler partly closed the shutters 
so as to shut out the direct light; that her sister stood at one end 
of the room, the canvas beside her; that Whistler would look at the 
picture from a distance, then dash at it, give one stroke, then dash 
away again. As a rule, they arrived about half-past ten or a quarter 
to eleven; he painted steadily, forgetting everything else, and it was 
often long after two before they lunched. When lunch was served, 
it was brought into the studio, placed on a low table, and they sat 
on stools. There were no such lunches anywhere. Mrs. Whistler 
provided American dishes, strange in London; among other things, 
raw tomatoes, a surprise to the Greek girls, who had never eaten 
tomatoes except over-cooked as the Greeks liked them, and canned 
apricots and cream, which they had never eaten at all. One menu 
was roast pheasants, followed by tomato salad, and the apricots and 
cream, usually with champagne. One cannot wonder that there were 
occasional deficits in the bank account at Lindsey Row. But it was 
not only the things to eat and drink that made the hour a delight. 
Whistler, silent when he worked, was gay at lunch. Perhaps better 
than his charm, Mrs. Stillman remembers his devotion to his mother, 
who was calm and dignified, with something of the sweet peacefulness 
of the Friends. After lunch work was renewed, and it was four and 
later before they were released. 

The sittings went on until the sitter fell ill. Whistler was pitiless 
with his models. The head in the Princesse gave him most trouble. 
He kept Miss Spartali standing while he worked at it, never letting her 
rest; she must keep the entire pose, and she would not admit her 
fatigue as long as she could help it. During her illness a model stood 
for the gown, and when she was getting better he came one day and 
made a pencil drawing of her head, though what became of it Mrs. 
Stillman never knew. There were a few sittings after this, and at 
last the picture was finished. The two girls wanted their father to 
buy it, but Mr. Spartali did not like it. He objected to it as a portrait 
88 [1864 


ee Oe ee = 


CHELSEA Days 


of his daughter. Appreciation of art was not among the virtues of 
the London Greeks. Alexander Ionides and his sons were almost 
alone in preferring a good thing. 

Rossetti, glad to be of service, tried to sell the picture. Whistler 
agreed to take a hundred pounds, and Rossetti placed the canvas in his 
studio, where it would be seen by a collector who was coming to look 
at his work. The collector came, saw the Princesse, liked it, wanted 
it. There was one objection: Whistler’s signature in big letters 
across the canvas. If Whistler would change the signature he would 
take the picture. Rossetti, enchanted, hurried to tell Whistler. 
Whistler was indignant. The request showed what manner of man 
the patron was, one in whose possession he did not care to have any 
work of his. However, Rossetti sold the Princesse to another collector, 
who died shortly afterwards, and then it was bought by Frederick 
Leyland, and so led to the decoration of The Peacock Room. 

It is possible that this objection helped Whistler to realise the 
inharmonious effect of a large signature on a picture. It is sure that, 
about this time, he began to arrange his initials somewhat after the 
Japanese fashion. They were first interlaced in an oblong or circular 
frame like the signatures of Japanese artists. He signed his name 
to the earliest pictures, even to some of the Japanese. But with the 
Nocturnes and the large portraits the Butterfly appeared, made from 
working the letters J. M. W. into a design, which became more fantastic 
until it evolved into the Butterfly in silhouette, and continued in various 
forms. In the Carlyle the Butterfly is enclosed in a round frame, 
like a cut-out silhouette, behind the figure, and repeats the prints on 
the wall. In the Miss Alexander it is in a large semicircle and is far 
more distinctly a butterfly. Then it grew like a stencil, though in 
no sense was it one, as may be seen in M. Duret’s portrait, where the 
Butterfly is made simply in silhouette, on the background, by a few 
touches of the rose of the opera cloak and the fan. It was introduced 
as a note of colour, as important in the picture as any other detail, 
and at times it was put in almost at the first painting to judge the 
effect, scraped out with the whole thing, put in again somewhere else, 
this repeated until he got it right. We have seen many an unfinished 
picture with a wonderfully finished Butterfly, because it was just where 
Whistler wanted it. 

1864] 89 


James McNertt WHISTLER 


The same development can be traced in his etchings, in which 
it began to appear as a bit of decoration. He originally signed the 
prints, and signed the plates with his name and date bitten in. But 
later the prints were signed with the Butterfly, followed by “imp,” 
while the Butterfly alone was etched on the copper or drawn on the 
stone. Then he added the Butterfly to his signature to letters and 
his dedication on prints. And the Butterfly found its way to his invi- 
tation cards, and at last his correspondence, public and private, was 
usually signed with the Butterfly alone. This was elaborated in- 
geniously in The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, the Butterfly not 
only decorating, but punctuating the paragraphs. Rumour says that 
Whistler went so far as to sign his cheques with the Butterfly, and 
that once, having signed a cheque for thirty-two francs in this manner, 
the man to whom it was paid demanded a more conventional signature. 
Whistler, provoked by the suggestion of doubt, wrote his name, knowing 
the bank would not then accept it, and was more provoked when he 
found the rare autograph had been sold within a day for eleven hundred 
and fifty francs. But rumour is probably wrong: on all the formal 
letters and documents we have seen, his name, and not the Butterfly, 
is used. 

On the frames of early pictures Japanese patterns were painted 
in red or blue on the flat gold, and a Butterfly placed on them, in relation 
to the picture. He designed the frames, and they were carried out 
by the Greaves, who also copied his designs at Streatham Town Hall, 
which they decorated thirty years later: Shortly before his death, a 
few were done by his stepson, E. Godwin. The Sarasate, in Pittsburg, 
is an excellent example, and so is the Battersea Bridge at the Tate 
Gallery. Whistler applied a similar scheme to his etchings, water- 
colours, and pastels, reddish or bluish lines, and at times the Butterfly, 
appearing on the white or gold of their frames. Certain people want 
to make out that Whistler got the idea from Rossetti. It might as well 
be said that Rossetti got it from the beginning of the world. There is 
nothing new in the idea. Artists always have decorated special frames _ 
for special pictures, and Whistler only carried on tradition when he 
designed frames in harmony with his work and varied them according ~ 
to the pictures for which they were used. In after years he gave — 
up almost entirely these painted frames, and for his paintings sub- — 
go [1864 


CHELSEA Days 


stituted a simple gold frame, with parallel reeded lines, now universally 
known as “the Whistler frame.” For his etchings and lithographs he 
chose a plain white frame in two planes. His canvases and his panels 
were always of the same sizes; consequently they always fitted his 
frames. And in his studio, as in few, if any others, frequently there 
might be half a hundred canvases with their faces to the wall, and 
only half a dozen frames. But they all fitted, and Whistler never 
showed his work unframed. This was the outcome of Japanese 
influence, and of his knowledge of the way the Japanese display their 
art. His deference to Japanese convention went so far that he put 
a branch of a tree or a reed into the foreground of his seas and rivers 
as decoration, in early work, with no reference to the picture, sometimes 
the only Japanese suggestion in the design. 

The Lange Leizen—of the Six Marks went to the Academy of 

1864, with Wapping. The critic of the Atheneum, to whom the 
Japanese subject seemed “ quaint ” and the drawing “ preposterously 
incorrect,” could not deny the “‘ superb colouring ” and the “ beautiful 
harmonies,” nor fail to see in Wapping an “incomparable view of 
the Lower Pool of London.” ‘ Never before was that familiar scene 
so triumphantly well painted,” Mr. W. M. Rossetti wrote. 

Whistler did not send to the Salon of 1864, in which Fantin showed 
his now famous Hommage a Delacroix, who had died in 1863. Whistler 
was among the several admirers whom Fantin painted round the 
portrait of the dead master. Whistler wanted Fantin to find a place 
for Rossetti, who would be proud to pose, and Fantin was willing, but 
Rossetti could not get to Paris. There was also talk of including 
Swinburne. Unfortunately for both, they were left out of one of 
the most celebrated portrait groups of modern times, now in the 
Moreau-Nélaton Collection in the Louvre. The distinguished artists 
and men of letters were there nominally out of respect to Delacroix, 
but really to enable Fantin to justify his belief in the beauty of life as it 
is, and his protest against the classical dictionary and studio properties. 
Most of them were, or have since become, famous: Whistler, Manet, 
Legros, Bracquemond, Fantin, Baudelaire, Duranty, Champfleury, 
Cordier, De Balleroy. Fantin painted them in the costume of the 
time, as Rembrandt and Hals and Van der Helst, from whom he is 
said to have taken the idea, painted the regents and archers of seven- 
1864] gI 


James McNerztt WuisTLer 


teenth-century Holland. Fantin’s white shirt is the one concession 
to picturesqueness, and the one relief to the severity of detail are the 
flowers held by Whistler, a lithe, erect, youthful figure, with fine, keen 
face and abundant hair. That the young American should be the 
centre of the group was a distinction. When Rossetti saw the picture, 
he wrote to his brother that it had “a great deal of very able painting 
in parts, but it is a great slovenly scrawl after all, like the rest of this 
incredible new school.” 

Whistler was already working out of the artificial scheme of the 
Japanese pictures into a phase in which he was more himself than he 
had ever been. The next year, 1865, he sent to the Academy the 
most complete, the most perfect picture he ever painted, The Little 
White Girl, which will always be recognised as one of the few great 
pictures of the world. It was dated 1864, and there are reproductions 
showing the date. But about 1900 he painted it out. He had been 
working on the picture, he told us, and “‘ did not see the use of those 
great figures sprawling there.” Jo was the model. Now, there was 
no masquerading in foreign finery. Whistler painted her as he must 
often have seen her, in her simple white gown, leaning against the 
mantel, her beautiful face reflected in the mirror. The room was 
not littered with his purchases from the little shops in the Strand and 
the Rue de Rivoli. Japan is in the detail of blue and white on the 
mantel; the girl holds a Japanese fan ; a spray of azalea trails across 
her dress. But these were part of Whistler’s house, part of the 
reality he had created for himself, and he made them no more beautiful 
than the mantel, the grate, the reflection in the mirror. There was 
no building up, he painted what he saw. And there was in the 
handling an advance. The paint is thinner on the canvas, the brush 
flows more freely. 

Swinburne saw the picture and wrote Before the Mirrors Verses 
under a Picture. The poem was printed on gold paper, pasted on the 
frame, which has disappeared, but we have a contemporary photo- 
graph showing the arrangement, and two verses were inserted in the 
Academy catalogue as sub-title. What Swinburne thought of the 
picture may be read in a letter he wrote to Ruskin in the summer 
of 1865 (Library Edition of the Works of Ruskin), in which he says 
that many, especially Dante Rossetti, told him his verses were better 
92 [1865 


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THE MORNING BEFORE THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW 


WOOD-ENGRAVING BY DALZIEL BROTHERS FROM “‘ ONCE A WEEK,’ VOL. VII, P. 219 


(See page 71) 


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CHELSEA Days 


than the painting, and that Whistler ranked them far above it. But 
a closer examination of the picture only convinced him of its greater 
beauty, and he would stand up for Whistler against Whistler and every- 
body else. 

Swinburne’s poem and praise could not make The Little White 
Girl at the Academy better understood than The White Girl had been 
in Berners Street. The rare few could appreciate its “ charm ” and 
“ exquisiteness ? with Mr. W. M. Rossetti, who found that it was 
“crucially tested by its proximity to the flashing white in Mr. Millais’ 
Esther,” but that it stood the test, “ retorting delicious harmony 
for daring force, and would shame any other contrast.” But the 
general opinion was the other way. The Atheneum distinguished 
itself by regretting that Whistler should make the “ most ‘ bizarre ’ 
of bipeds ” out of the women he painted. There was praise for two 
other pictures. “ Subtle beauty of colour”? and “ almost mystical 
delicacy of tone ” were discovered in The Gold Screen, and “ colour 
such as painters love” in the Old Battersea Bridge, afterwards Brown 
and Silver. This is the beautiful Battersea, with the touch of red 
in the roofs of the opposite shore, the link between the early paintings 
on the river and the Nocturnes that were to follow. The Scarf, a 
picture we do not recognise, attracted less attention, and Whistler, 
the year before, declared ‘‘ one of the most original artists of the day ” 
was now dismissed as one who “ might be called half a great artist.” 

Stranger than this was the change in the attitude of the French 
critics. In 1863 they overwhelmed him with praise. Two years 
later they had hardly a good word for him. Levi Legrange, forgotten 
as he merits, wrote the criticism of the Royal Academy of 1865 for the 
Gazette des Beaux-Arts, and all he could see in The Little White Girl 
was a weak repetition of The White Girl, a wearisome variation of 
the theme of white; really, he said, it was quite witty of the Acade- 
micians, who could have refused it and the two Japanese pictures, to 
give them good places and so deliver them to judgment. And then 
he praised Horsley and Prinsep, Leslie and Landseer. The Princesse 
du Pays de la Porcelaine, in the Salon, made no more favourable 
impression. It seemed a study of costume to Paul Mantz, who, in 
the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, decided to forget it and remember merely 
the mysterious seduction of The White Girl of two years before. Its 
1865] 93 


James McNett WuisTLeR 


eccentricity was only possible if taken in small doses like the homeo- 
pathist’s pills, according to the incredible Jules Claretie, who, in the 
same article in L’ Artiste, laughed at Manet’s Olympia. For more 
than twenty years Whistler was hated in France. 

In this Salon, 1865, Fantin showed his Hommage a la Vérité—Le 
Toast, the second of his two large groups including Whistler’s portrait. 
In it he strayed so far from the real as to introduce an allegorical 
figure of Truth, and to allow Whistler to array himself in a gorgeous 
Chinese robe. “ Pense a la robe, superbe a faire, et donne la moi!” 
Whistler urged from London, and Fantin yielded. “ Fe Pai encore 
revu dans V atelier en 1865, 11 me posa dans un tableau aujourd hut détruit, 
‘Le Toast, ou il était costumé d’une robe japonaise,” is Fantin’s story 
of it in the notes to us, but Whistler, writing at the time, speaks of 
the costume as Chinese. He brought it to Paris for the sittings. 
Fantin was quick to regret his concessions. An allegorical figure 
could not be made real, the whole thing was absurd. When he got 
the canvas back he destroyed it, all but the portraits of Whistler, 
Vollon, and himself. Whistler’s is now in the Freer Collection. 

In the spring of 1865 Whistler was joined in London by his younger 
brother. Dr. Whistler had distinguished himself in the Confederate 
Army as a surgeon and by bravery in the field. He had served in 
Richmond Hospitals and in Libby Prison; he had been assistant- 
surgeon at Drewry’s Bluff, and in 1864, when Grant made his move 
against Richmond, he had been assigned to Orr’s Rifles, a celebrated 
South Carolina regiment. In the early winter of 1865 a few months’ 
furlough was given him, and he was entrusted by the Confederate 
Government with important despatches to England. Sherman’s 
advance prevented his running the blockade from Charleston, nor was 
there any passing through the lines from Wilmington by sea. He 
was obliged to go North through Maryland, which meant making 
his way round Grant’s lines. The difficulties and dangers were endless. 
He had to get rid of his Confederate uniform, and in the state of Con- 
federate finance the most modest suit of clothes cost fourteen hundred 
dollars; for a seat in a waggon he had to pay five hundred. The 
trains were crowded with officials and soldiers, and he could get a 
ride in them only by stealth. The roads were abominable, for driving 
or riding or walking. Often he was alone, and his one companion 
94 [1865 


CHELSEA Days 


toward the North was a fellow soldier who had lost a leg at Antietam 
and was trying to get to Philadelphia for repairs to an artificial one. 
Stanton’s expedition filled the country near the Rappahannock with 
snares and pitfalls; to cross Chesapeake Bay was to take one’s life 
in one’s hand; and north of the Bay were the enrolling officers of 
the Union in search of conscripts. However, Philadelphia was at 
last reached and a ticket for New York bought at the railroad depot, 
where two sentries, with bayonets fixed, guarded the ticket-office, 
and might, for all Dr. Whistler knew, have seen him in Libby Prison. 
In New York he took passage on the City of Manchester, and from Liver- 
pool he hurried to London. One week later came the news of the fall 
of Richmond and the Confederacy. The furlough was over. There 
was no going back. It was probably about this time, from the costume 
and the technical resemblance to Mr. Luke Ionides’ portrait, that 
Whistler painted a head of Dr. Whistler—Portrait of my Brother— 
now owned by Mr. Burton Mansfield, though it should and might 
have been in the National Gallery in Washington. 

Early in September 1865, Whistler’s mother was suffering from 
trouble with her eyes, and went with her two sons to Coblentz to 
consult an oculist, and this gave Whistler the chance to revisit some 
of the scenes of the French Set of etchings. After that he spent 
a month or two at Trouville, where he was joined by Courbet. 
Whistler’s work shows how far he had drifted away, though the two 
were always friends. In Sea and Rain, done at Trouville, there is 
not a suggestion of Courbet. But we have seen a sea by Courbet, owned 
by M. Duret, that Whistler might have signed. Jo was there too. 
The sea-pieces he had begun, including Courbet on the Shore, promised 
great things, he wrote to Mr. Luke Ionides, and as the autumn went 
on the place was more quiet for work, and the seas and skies more 
wonderful. He did not get back to London until November. A 
few months later, early in 1866, he sailed for Valparaiso. 

This journey to Valparaiso is the most unaccountable adventure 
in his sometimes unaccountable career. Various reasons for it have 
been given: health, a quarrel, restlessness, a whim. But we tell the 
story as he told it to us: © 

*‘Tt was a moment when many of the adventurers the war had 
made of many Southerners were knocking about London hunting for 
1866] 95 


James McNe1tt WuIsTLER 


something to do, and, I hardly knew how, but the something resolved 
itself into an expedition to go and help the Chilians and, I cannot 
say why, the Peruvians, too. Anyhow, there were South Americans 
to be helped against the Spaniards. Some of these people came to 
me, as a West Point man, and asked me to join—and it was all done 
in an afternoon. I was off at once in a steamer from Southampton 
to Panama. We crossed the Isthmus, and it was all very awful— 
earthquakes and things—and I vowed, once I got home, that nothing 
would ever bring me back again. 

‘“‘T found myself in Valparaiso and in Santiago, and I called on the 
President, or whoever the person then in authority was. After that 
came the bombardment. There was the beautiful bay with its curving 
shores, the town of Valparaiso on one side, on the other the long line 
of hills. And there, just at the entrance of the bay, was the Spanish 
fleet, and, in between, the English fleet, and the French fleet, and 
the American fleet, and the Russian fleet, and all the other fleets. And 
when the morning came, with great circles and sweeps, they sailed 
out into the open sea, until the Spanish fleet alone remained. It 
drew up right in front of the town, and bang went a shell, and the 
bombardment began. The Chilians didn’t pretend to defend them- 
selves. The people all got out of the way, and I and the officials 
rode to the opposite hills, where we could look on. The Spaniards 
conducted the performance in the most gentlemanly fashion; they 
just set fire to a few of the houses, and once, with some sense of fun, 
sent a shell whizzing over toward our hills. And then I knew what 
a panic was. I and the officials turned and rode as hard as we could, 
anyhow, anywhere. The riding was splendid, and I, as a West Point 
man, was head of the procession. By noon the performance was over. 
The Spanish fleet sailed again into position, the other fleets sailed in, 
sailors landed to help put out the fires, and I and the officials rode 
back into Valparaiso. All the little girls of the town had turned 
out, waiting for us, and as we rode in called us ‘Cowards!’ The 
Henriquetta, the ship fitted up in London, did not appear till long 
after, and then we breakfasted, and that was the end of it.” 

Mr. Theodore Roussel says Whistler told him that, on another 
occasion, he got on one of the defending gunboats and had his baptism 
of fire amid a rain of shot and shell, and that then, as we have said, 
96 [1866 


CHELSEA Days 


the white lock appeared, a fact which, fine as it is, Whistler omitted 
from his story to us. 

He made good use of his time in Valparaiso, and painted the three 
pictures of the harbour which are known and two others which have 
disappeared. These he gave to the steward or the purser of the ship 
to bring home, and the purser kept them. Once they were seen in 
his house in London by someone who recognised Whistler’s work. 
“Why, they must be by Whistler!” he said. ‘ Who’s Whistler ? ” 
asked the purser. ‘‘ An artist,” said the other. ‘Oh, no,” said the 
purser, “‘ they were painted by a gentleman.” The purser started back 
for South America, and took them with him. ‘“ And then a tidal wave 
met the ship and swept off the purser, the cabin, and the Whistlers.” 
But we believe that one of these pictures is now in the United States. 

The voyage back was vaguer than the voyage out. From this 
vagueness looms one figure: the Marquis de Marmalade, a black man 
from Hayti, who made himself obnoxious to Whistler, apparently 
by his colour and his swagger. One day Whistler kicked him across 
the deck to the top of the companion way, and there sat a lady who 
proved an obstacle for the moment. But Whistler just picked up 
the Marquis de Marmalade, dropped him on the step below her, and 
finished kicking him downstairs. After that Whistler spent the rest 
of the journey, not exactly in irons, but chiefly in his cabin. 

The final adventure of the journey was in London. Whistler 
never told us, but everybody else says that when he got out of the 
train at Euston, or Waterloo, someone besides his friends was waiting : 
whether the captain of the ship, or relations of the Marquis de 
Marmalade, or an old enemy makes little difference. Somebody got 
a thrashing, and this was the end to the most unaccountable episode 


in Whistler’s life. 


CHAPTER XII: CHELSEA DAYS CONTINUED. THE YEARS 
EIGHTEEN SIXTY-SIX TO EIGHTEEN SEVENTY-TWO. 


Ir was late in 1866 when Whistler returned from Valparaiso. Soon 
after he moved into No. 2,* at the east end of Lindsey Row, now 


: * He never lived at No. 3, as Walter Greaves has wrongly stated. 
1866] G 97 


James McNeitt WHIsTLER 


No. 96 Cheyne Walk. It was a three-storey house with an attic, part 
of the old palace remodelled, and, like No. 7, it looked on the river. 
Here he lived longer than anywhere else; here he painted the 
Nocturnes and the great portraits; here he gave his Sunday break- 
fasts. He had a house-warming on February 5 (1867), when the two 
Rossettis dined with him, and Mr. W. M. Rossetti wrote in his diary : 

“There are some fine old fixtures, such as doors, fireplaces, and 
Whistler has got up the rooms with many delightful Japanesisms. 
Saw for the first time his pagoda cabinet. He has two or three sea- 
pieces new to me: one, on which he particularly lays stress, larger 
than the others, a very grey unbroken sea [probably Sea and Rain], 
also a clever vivacious portrait of himself begun.” 

No doubt this is the portrait in round hat, with paint-brushes 
in his hand. 

Mr. Greaves says that the dining-room at No. 2 was blue, with a 
darker blue dado and doors, and purple Japanese fans tacked on the 
walls and ceiling; other friends remember “a fluttering of purple 
fans.” One evening Miss Chapman was dining, and Whistler, wanting 
her to see the view up the river from the other end of the bridge, told 
her he would show her something “‘ as lovely as a fan!” The studio, 
again the second-storey back room, was grey, with black dado and 
doors; from the Mother and the Carlyle one knows that Japanese 
hangings and his prints were on the walls ; and in it was the big screen 
he painted for Leyland but kept for himself, with Battersea Bridge 
across the top, Chelsea Church beyond, and a great gold moon in the 
deep blue sky. The stairs were covered with Dutch metal. He slept 
in a huge Chinese bed. Beautiful silver was on his table. He ate off 
blue and white. ‘‘ Suppose one of these plates was smashed ? ” Miss 
Chapman asked Whistler once. ‘“‘ Why, then, you know,” he said, 
“we might as well all take hands and go throw ourselves into the 
Thames ! ” 

The beauty of the decoration, as at No. 7, was its simplicity. 
Rossetti’s house was a museum, an antiquity shop, in comparison. 
The simplicity seemed the more bewildering because it was the growth, 
not of weeks, but of years. The drawing-room was not painted until 
the day of Whistler’s first dinner-party. In the morning he sent for 
the brothers Greaves to help him. ‘“ It will never be dry in time! ” 
98 [1867 


a 


CHELSEA Days 


they feared. ‘‘ What matter ? ” said Whistler, “it will be beautiful ! ” 
“We three worked like mad,” is Mr. Walter Greaves’ account, and 
by evening the walls were flushed with flesh-colour, pale yellow, and 
white spread over doors and woodwork, and we have heard gowns 
and coats too were touched with flesh-colour and yellow before the 
evening was at an end. One Sunday morning Whistler, after he had 
taken his mother to Chelsea Church, as he always did, again sent for 
his pupils and painted a great ship with spreading sails in each of the 
two panels at the end of the hall; the ships are said to be still on the 
wall covered up. His mother was not so pleased when, on her return, 
she saw the blue and white harmony, for she would have had him 
put away his brushes on Sunday as once she put away his toys. But 
she had many other trials and revelations: coming into the studio 
one day, she found the parlour-maid posing for “the all-over!” The 
ships were in place long before the dado of hall and stairway was 
covered with gold and sprinkled with rose and white chrysanthemum 
petals. Miss Alexander (Mrs. Spring-Rice) saw Whistler at work 
upon it when she came to sit, and he had lived six years at No. 2. 
Whistler’s houses were never completely decorated and furnished ; 
they had a look as if he had just moved in or was just moving out. 
But what was decorated was beautiful. 

Whistler sent to the exhibitions of 1867, in London and Paris. 
He began the year by showing at the French Gallery, in January, 
one of the paintings of Valparaiso: Crépuscule in Flesh Colour and 
Green. It is the long picture of Valparaiso Harbour in the early even-, 
ing, ships moored with partly furled sails ; the first painting of twilight, 
and one of the first paintings carried out in the liquid manner of the 
Nocturnes. There were critics to call it a poem “in colour,” though 
Whistler had not taught them to look for the “ painter’s poetry ” 
in his work. The upright Valparaiso, a perfect Nocturne, was done 
at the same time, 1866, but not exhibited until later, and there is an 
unfinished version of the same subject. 

In the Salon of 1867, where it had been rejected eight years before, 
At the Piano was accepted, and also The Thames in Ice—Sur la Tamise : 
P?Hiver. It was the year of the French Universal Exhibition. M. Duret 
writes that probably Mr. George Lucas spoke of Whistler to Mr. Avery, 
the United States Art Commissioner at the Exhibition. The result 
1867] 99 


James McNertt WuistTLER 


was that a number of his etchings and four pictures were hung: The 
White Girl, Wapping or On the Thames, Old Battersea Bridge, Twilight 
on the Ocean, the title then of the Crépuscule in Flesh Colour and Green. 
The Hudson River School dominated American art, and Whistler’s 
paintings had to compete with the big machines of Church and Bierstadt. 
Tuckerman, in his Book of the Artists, quotes an unnamed American 
critic who, in 1867, found that Whistler’s etchings differed from his 
paintings in meriting the attention they attracted, but he could see 
in the Marines only “ blurred, foggy imperfections,” and in The White 
Girl only “a powerful female with red hair, and a vacant stare in her 
soulless eyes.. She is standing on a wolfskin hearthrug, for what reason 
is unrecorded. The picture evidently means vastly more than it ex- 
presses—albeit expressing too much. Notwithstanding an obvious want 
of purpose, there is some boldness in the handling, and singularity in the 
glare of the colours which cannot fail to divert the eye and weary it.” 

Americans were not treated with respect by the Hanging Committee. 
Their work was put in corridors and dark corners, and Whistler suffered. 
French critics, enthusiastic over his pictures four years earlier, were 
now no more appreciative than the American. Paul Mantz was 
distressed by the “strange white apparition”? upon which, at the 
Salon des Refusés, he had lavished his praise. Burty thought that 
either time exaggerated the defects of the prints or else critical eyes 
had lost their indulgence, for the etchings were photographic and had 
a dryness and minuteness due to the early training of “‘ Mr. Whystler.” 
Both wrote in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts. Mr. Avery, however, had 
the sense to appreciate the etchings, and it was probably at this time he 
commenced his great collection, now in the New York Public Library. 

Whistler and his brother, the Doctor, went to Paris in April. 
There they heard of the sudden death of Traer, Seymour Haden’s 
assistant, and a member of the British Jury, on which Haden also 
served. Whistler liked Traer, and the circumstances of his death and 
burial led to a misunderstanding between the two brothers and the 
brother-in-law. The three met. The dispute was short and sharp; 
the result, a summons for the brothers to appear before a juge de 
paix. Whistler had been in the same court a few days earlier. A 
workman had dropped plaster on him as he passed through a narrow 
street in the Latin Quarter, and he had met the offence in the only 
100 [1867 


CHELSEA Days 


way possible according to his code. Whistler sent for the American 
Minister, and the magistrate apologised. When he appeared again, 
““ Connu /” said the judge, and there was no apology, but a fine. Haden 
said he fell through a plate-glass window, Whistler that he knocked 
him through. Haden maintained that both brothers were against 
him, Whistler that he demolished Haden single-handed. 

It happened just when London gossip got hold of the story of the 
Marquis de Marmalade and Whistler’s return from Valparaiso. Dr. 
Moncure Conway, in his Reminiscences, recalls a dinner given by Dante 
Rossetti to W. J. Stillman, in the winter of 1867, when “ Whistler 
(a Confederate) related with satisfaction his fisticuff with a Yankee 
[really the black Marquis] on shipboard, William Rossetti remarked : 
‘I must say, Whistler, that your conduct was scandalous.’ (Stillman 
and myself were silent.) Dante Gabriel promptly wrote: 


* There’s a combative Artist named W bistler 
Who 1s, like his own hog-hairs, a bristler ; 
A tube of white lead 
And a punch on the head 
Offer varied attractions to Whistler.’ ” 


It was at this time, too, that Whistler had a difference with Legros, 
to which no reference would be made had it not also become a legend. 
Friends tried to reconcile them and succeeded badly. The rumours 
spread, and Whistler began to be talked of as quarrelsome. Haden, 
when he got back to London, resigned his post as Honorary Surgeon 
to South Kensington Museum, printed a pamphlet to explain, and 
threatened to resign from the Burlington Fine Arts Club, of which 
both he and Whistler were members, unless Whistler was expelled. 
The Burlington Club wrote to Whistler that if he did not resign they 
would have to consider his expulsion. Both the Rossettis considered 
this very improper, and when Whistler’s expulsion was voted by 
eighteen against eight, William Michael Rossetti handed in his resig- 
nation at once and Dante Rossetti sent in his two or three days 
later. 

Whistler’s manner of resenting injury had a great deal to do with 
the way he was later treated in England. He explained his code to 
a friend: “ If a man gives you the lie to your face, why, naturally you 
1867] 101 


James McNeitt WuisTLER 


hit him.” . People who did not know him became afraid of him, and 
this fear grew and was the reason of the reputation that clung to him 
for years and clings to his memory. 

Before Whistler’s pictures went to the Royal Academy, Mr. W. M. 
Rossetti saw them: ‘‘ March 31 (1867). To see Whistler’s pictures 
for the R.A. To the R.A. he means to send Symphony in White, 
No. III. (heretofore named The Two Little White Girls), and a Thames 
picture; possibly also one of the four sea pictures; and I rather 
recommend him to select the largest of these, which he regards with 
predilection, of a grey sea and a very grey sky.” 

Battersea was the Thames picture; Sea and Rain, painted while 
Whistler and Courbet worked together at Trouville, the sea picture ; 
and The Two Little White Girls was sent under its new name, Symphony 
in White, No. IIJ.—the first time one of his pictures was catalogued 
as a Symphony, his first use of a title borrowed from muscial terms 
to explain his pictorial intention. 

Baudelaire had given the hint in prose, Gautier had written 
Symphonies in verse, Murger’s Bohemians had composed a Symphonie 
sur Pinfluence de bleu dans les arts. In 1863 Paul Mantz had described 
The White Girl as a “Symphony in White.” There can be no doubt 
that from these things Whistler got the idea. It was the third variation 
of white upon white. The difference was in the thin liquid paint. 
The critic of the Atheneum had the sense to thank the “ painter who 
endeavours by any means to show people what he really aims at.” 
But he was almost alone. Burty, in noticing the Academy of 1867 
for the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, thought the Academy’s hanging 
Whistler at all a fine piece of irony, and regretted the painter’s failure 
to fulfil his early promise. . 

Hamerton, in the Saturday Review, June 1, 1867, represented the 
feeling of the insulted, solemn, bewildered Islanders: ‘‘ There are 
many dainty varieties of tint, but it is not precisely a symphony 
in white. One lady has a yellowish dress and brown hair and a bit 
of blue ribbon; the other has a red fan, and there are flowers and 
green leaves. There is a girl in white on a white sofa, but even 
this girl has reddish hair; and, of course, there is the flesh-colour of 
the complexions.” 

Whistler answered in a letter, not printed, however, until it appeared 
102 [1867 


CHELSEA Days 


in the Art Fournal (April 1887): ‘‘ Bon Dieu! did this wise person 
expect white hair and chalked faces? And does he then, in his 
astounding consequence, believe that a symphony in F contains no other 
note, but shall be a continued repetition of F F F? . . . Fool!” 
Whistler knew that to carry on tradition was the artist’s business. 
Rembrandt, Hals, Velasquez, Claude, Canaletto, Guardi, Hogarth, 
Courbet, the Japanese, in turn influenced him. Some see, at this 
period, the influence of Albert Moore, which, if it existed, was as 
ephemeral and superficial as Rossetti’s. It could be argued with more 
truth that Whistler influenced Albert Moore, who, in at least two 
pictures, Harmony of Orange and Pale Yellow, Variation of Blue and 
Gold, borrowed Whistler’s titles. Whistler also knew that the end of 
all study of the masters should be to evolve something personal, and, 
in the endeavour to develop his personality, he was passing through 
experiments and working through difficulties. All this is in his letters 
to Fantin. A fourth Symphony in White was started: the Three 
Figures. In the Two Girls, he wrote to Fantin, the harmony was 
repeated in line and in colour, and he sent a sketch of it. He exulted 
in the rhythm of line ; he despaired because he could not get it right. 
The picture was scraped out and rubbed down, then repainted, and 
with each fresh difficulty he deplored the mistakes of his early training. 
Mr. Eddy writes that Whistler used to call Ingres the “ bourgeots 
Greek.”’ This we never heard him say, nor is there any such want of 
respect in his letters to Fantin, for there he expresses regret that he 
“did not study under Ingres,”’ whose work he may have liked moder- 
ately, “‘ but from whom I would have learned to draw”: which was 
absurd modesty, for he drew better than Ingres, if not so academically, 
as his etchings prove. He never execrated Courbet and denounced ce 
damné Réalisme so violently as in the autumn of 1867. This was not 
quite fair, for Realism had brought Courbet to the conclusions which 
Whistler, unaided, was now reaching: that knowledge of art, ancient 
and modern, has no end save the development of individuality, and 
that the artist is to go to Nature for inspiration, but to take from her 
only life and beauty. Whistler, in his impatience, recalled Realism 
as practised by the young enthusiasts gathered about Courbet, and 
denied that Courbet influenced him. “ Ca ne pouvait pas étre autrement, 
parce que je suis trés personnel, et que j’at été riche en qualités qu'il navatt 
1867] 103 


James McNeitt WuisTLER 


pas et qui me suffisaient.”” The cry of Nature had appealed to his vanity, 
Whistler said, and so he had mocked at tradition, and in his early 
work had copied Nature with the self-confidence of “‘ P’écolier débauché.” 
If at one moment he boasted that the race was for Fantin and himself, 
because in art, as at the Derby, “ c’est le pur sang qui gagne,”’ the next 
he chafed over the time he had lost before discovering that art is not 
the exact reproduction of Nature, but its interpretation, and that 
the artist must seek his motives in Nature and weave from them a 
pattern on his canvas. He praised Fantin’s flowers because he saw 
in them this pattern. Passages in the letters are the basis of The Ten 
o’Clock. His definition of the relation of drawing to colour—“ son 
amant, mais aussi son mattre’—suggests the later definition of the 
relation of the artist to Nature: ‘“‘ her son in that he loves her, her 
master in that he knows her.” Whistler used the same ideas in his 
talk, in his letters, in his pamphlets, perfecting it. 

It was the period of transition. Those who saw him know how hard 
he worked, and how he was discouraged. For a while he lived with 
Mr. Frederick Jameson. He never spoke to us of this interval away 
from Lindsey Row. Mr. Jameson says it was 1868 or 1869; most 
likely the winter of 1867-68, when Mrs. Whistler went home to visit 
her family, left poor by the war. Mr. Jameson lived at 62 Great Russell 
Street, Bloomsbury, in rooms that had first been Burne-Jones’, and 
afterwards Poynter’s. Mr. Jameson writes us: 

“The seven months Whistler and I lived together were unpro- 
ductive and uneventful. He was working at some Japanese pictures, 
one of which, quite unfinished, was hung at the London Memorial 
Exhibition. I have seen large portions of it apparently finished, but 
they never satisfied him, and were shaved down to the bed-rock merci- 
lessly. The man, as I knew him, was so different from the descriptions 
and presentations I have read of him that I would like to speak of the 
other side of his character. It is impossible to conceive of a more 
unfailingly courteous, considerate, and delightful companion than 
Whistler, as I found him. We lived in great intimacy, and the studio 
was always open to me, whatever he was doing. We had all our meals 
together, except when elsewhere engaged, and I never heard a complaint 
of anything in our simple household arrangements from him. Any 
little failure was treated asa joke. His courtesy to servants and models 
104 [1868 


PORTRAIT OF WHISTLER BY HIMSELF 


CHALK DRAWING; 


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(See page 79) 


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MTIVHO NI AGNLS 


CHELSEA Days 


was particularly charming ; indeed, I can’t conceive of his quarrelling 
with anyone without real provocation. His talk about his own work 
revealed a very different man to me from the self-satisfied man he is 
usually believed to have been. He knew his powers, of course, but 
he was painfully aware of his defects—in drawing, for instance. I 
can remember with verbal accuracy some very striking talks we had 
on the subject. To my judgment he was the most absolutely truthful 
man about himself that I ever met. I never knew him to hide an opinion 
or a thought, nor to try to excuse an action.” 

The picture Mr. Jameson refers to was called Three Figures, Pink 
and Grey,* in the London Memorial Exhibition. It alone was carried 
out of the Six or Eight Schemes or Projects in which Whistler was trying 
to combine Japanese and classical motives, expressing a beauty of form 
and design that haunted him, and was perhaps best realised in some 
of the pastel studies. He never ceased to make these studies. There 
are pastels, chalk drawings, and etchings in which the separate figures 
of the Projects may be found, studies for the series ; one was worked 
out as a fan, another like a cameo. The second version of the Three 
Figures, enlarged from a smaller design, Whistler explained to Mr. 
Alan S. Cole, was an arrangement he wanted to paint, and he then 
drew, with a sweep of the brush, the back of the stooping figure to 
show what he meant. W. M. Rossetti most likely referred to it when 
he wrote in his diary for July 28, 1867: 

“Whistler is doing on a largish scale for Leyland the subject of 
women with flowers, and has made coloured sketches of four or five 
other subjects of the like class, very promising in point of conception 
of colour and arrangement.” 

The Projects were his first scheme of decoration for Leyland. The 
canvases are about the same size. They are painted with liquid 
colour, the canvas often showing through. The handling in all save 
the Venus, shown in the Paris Memorial Exhibition and worked on 
in his later years, is more direct than anything he ever did. They 
have the same relation to his pictures as the sketches of Rubens and 
Tiepolo to their decorations. The Venus is a single figure, the rest 
are groups arranged against a balustrade, round a vase of flowers, or 
on the sands by the sea. Their floating draperies give the scheme of 


* See Chapter XXXV. 
1868 ] 105 


James McNeitt WuisTLeR 


colour. The experience gained in making these designs was of immense 
use in the Nocturnes, for the technique is the same, and the same 
treatment is in the pile of drapery of the Miss Alexander. He did 
not give up until much later this method of painting. The complete 
series had never been seen publicly before the Paris Memorial 
Exhibition. They belong to Mr, Freer. 

During all his life, till he was given a commission for a panel in 
the Boston Public Library, Whistler hoped to have the chance to 
execute a great decorative scheme. When the Central Gallery at the 
Victoria and Albert Museum was being decorated, Sir Henry Cole asked 
him to design one of the mosaic panels. For this, in the winter of 1873, 
he made a pastel, a richly robed figure carrying a Japanese umbrella. 
The scheme was in blue, purple, and gold, and a pastel study for it was 
shown at the London Memorial Exhibition as Design for a Mosaic. He 
spoke of it at the time as The Gold Girl. The design was to be enlarged 
and put on canvas by the brothers Greaves. Sir Henry Cole offered 
him a studio in the Museum when he was ready to begin his cartoon. 
“You know, Sir Henry Cole always liked me, and I told him he ought 
to provide me with a fine studio—it would be an honour to me— 
and to the Museum!” But models broke down, the fog settled over 
London, he wanted to get through his Academy picture, he was called 
to Paris. Whether the cartoon was finished, or whether it was found 
out of keeping with the machines of Royal Academicians in the Central 
Gallery, is not known. But the decoration was never done. 

Hamerton’s Etching and Etchers was published in 1868. Shortly 
before, he wrote to Whistler: ‘‘ I wonder whether you would object 
to lend me a set of proofs for a few weeks. As the book is already 
advanced I should be glad of an early reply. My opinion of your work 
is, on the whole, so favourable that your reputation could only gain by 
your affording me the opportunity of speaking of your work at length.” 

Whistler took no notice of the request at the time, but printed it 
years afterwards as the Unanswered Letter in The Gentle Art. Hamerton, 
unused to being ignored by artists, expressed his astonishment in his 
book: “I have been told that, if application is made by letter to 
Mr. Whistler for a set of his etchings, he may, perhaps, if he chooses to 
answer the letter, do the applicant the favour to let him have a copy 


for about the price of a good horse.” | 
106 [1873 


CHELSEA Days 


His praise was never without qualification. He saw in Whistler 
a strikingly imperfect artist, self-concentrated, without range or poetical 
feeling, whose work was rarely affecting, and most of these remarks 
were reprinted by Whistler with the Unanswered Letter as Incon- 
sequences. Inthe end Whistler let Hamerton have a plate, Billingsgate, 
in its third state, published in the Portfolio (January 1878), and, two 
years after, in the third edition of Htching and Etchers (1880). 

Hamerton, patronising in his estimate of Whistler’s work, exag- 
gerated in his comments on Whistler’s prices. Success never induced 
Whistler deliberately to increase the price of his etchings by making 
them rare, in the fashion of the young men of to-day. It was different 
with his dry-points, the number of impressions being limited. Mr. Percy 
Thomas says that Whistler would throw them on the floor at Lindsey 
Row and consider them. “I think for this we must say five guineas, 
and for this six, and for this I must say—ten!” But Mr. Thomas 
remembers only one attempt to create a price. He had been sent 
from Bond Street to Lindsey Row with prints for Whistler to sign, 
and the next day he returned for them. Whistler and Mrs. Whistler 
were sitting together, silent and sad, and Whistler hurried from the 
studio without a word. “But what is it? What has happened ?” 
Mr. Thomas asked, and Mrs. Whistler explained that Whistler had 
thrown the prints into the fire, thinking it would be a good thing 
to make them rare, and had been miserable since. If he destroyed 
work he was sure to regret it. “fat tant pleuré apres,” as he wrote 
to Fantin. Another incident remembered by Mr. Thomas would 
have altered Hamerton’s idea of Whistler’s business methods. Edmund 
Thomas had gone to the studio and offered a sum for all the prints 
in it. Whistler accepted the offer, Mr. Thomas drew a cheque, and 
carried off the prints. A couple of hours later a messenger appeared 
with a bundle of proofs. Whistler had come upon them, and sent word 
that, according to the bargain, they belonged to Mr. Thomas. 

Towards the end of the sixties, or beginning of the seventies, 
Mr. Murray Marks tried to start a Fine Art Company with Alexander 
Ionides, Rossetti, Burne-Jones, and Morris to deal in pictures, prints, 
blue and white, and decorative work. They were to sell Watts’, 
Burne-Jones’, and Rossetti’s pictures, and Whistler’s etchings, possibly 
his paintings. Ionides, who was to advance two or three thousand 
1868] 107 


James McNett WHISTLER 


pounds, bought the sixteen plates by Whistler now known as the 
Thames Set, and the prints from them. The sum paid was three 
hundred pounds. A secretary was engaged for the company, but 
that was the end of it. The plates became the absolute property 
of Ionides. He had a hundred sets printed; he gave one set to each 
of his children; the others were taken over by Messrs. Ellis and Green, 
and published in 1871 as Sixteen Etchings of Scenes on the Thames, 
price twelve guineas. Later, the plates came into the possession of 
the Fine Art Society, who sold the prints unsigned as a set in a portfolio 
for fourteen guineas, or, singly, from half a guinea to two guineas and 
a half. Finally Mr. Keppel, of New York, bought the coppers, had 
the steel facing removed, for they had been steeled, Goulding printed 
a number from each, and some good prints were obtained. The plates 
were then destroyed. 

Official recognition of Whistler, the etcher, continued. The Bridal 
Museum bought his prints and only stopped when, some years ago, 
it was discovered that the work of living artists could not be purchased 
for the Print Room. The ignorance of this regulation was of value 
to the Museum, where there are now one hundred and nine etchings by 
Whistler. At the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington, 
there are sixty-one prints, besides several issued in various publications 
and a second Thames Set in the Ionides Collection. For several years 
the late Sir Richard R. Holmes purchased prints for Windsor Castle 
Library, about one hundred and forty in all. He wrote us: 

“ It is difficult to say when, or how, I first began collecting Whistler’s 
etchings. I had a few, and then I met several while I was looking 
after other things at Thibaudeau’s, and, gradually, I found I had so 
many that I thought it best to make the collection as complete as I 
could, and got a number from Whistler himself.” 

Often Sir Richard went to the studio; often Whistler sent to 
Windsor prints he thought should be there. The Venetian series 
was bought. Finally, after Sir Richard’s retirement, they were sold 
“to improve the collection” at what was supposed the height of 
the “ Whistler boom,” and after they had been praised in the Memorial 
Exhibitions of London and Paris. As King Edward VII. on his visit 
to the London Memorial Exhibition expressed surprise at the few he 
looked at, it is certain that his Majesty was unaware that the collection 
108 [1871 


THE LANGE LEIZEN OF THE SIX MARKS 
PURPLE AND ROSE 
OIL 
In the John G. Johnson Collection, Philadelphia 


(See page 87) 


(See page 87) 


HARMONY IN FLESH-COLOUR AND GREEN 
THE BALCONY 


OIL 


In the Charles L, Freer Collection, National Gallery of American Art 


; 
: 
i 
; 
. 
} 
| 
| 


CuHELsEA Days 


was at Windsor. Even the portfolio, presented by Whistler to Queen 
Victoria with his autograph letter asking her acceptance, was first 
lost, and, when found, sold in 1906, the few prints in Princess Victoria’s 
apartments only being kept. The disposal of the etchings was so badly 
managed that the Jubilee series brought more, when re-sold a few 
weeks after the King parted with them, than his Majesty got for the 
whole collection. During Whistler’s lifetime important collections of 
his etchings were acquired also by the Museums of Dresden, Venice, 
and Melbourne, and the New York Public Library. 

The success of Whistler’s plates during the following years is a 
contrast to the fate of his pictures, which for a long period were 
neglected. He had nothing in the Academy of 1868. Mr. Jameson 
has told us of his despair because the Three Girls was not finished in 
time, and of their wandering together about town, in and out of galleries 
and museums, until at last, before Velasquez in the National Gallery, 
Whistler took heart again. And he delighted in the admiration of 
Swinburne in Notes on Some Pictures of 1868. The paintings which 
had not been submitted “ to the loose and slippery judgment of an 
academy,” but had been seen by Swinburne in the studio and seemed 
to him “ to have grown as a flower grows,” were evidently the Projects. 
A special quality of Whistler’s genius, Swinburne said, is “a freshness 
and fullness of the loveliest life of things, with a high, clear power 
upon them which seems to educe a picture as the sun does a blossom © 
or a fruit.” 

In 1869 the Academy moved to Burlington House, and there in 
1870 Whistler showed The Balcony. From 1867 to 1870 he did not 
show in the Salon. Whistler, like Rossetti, was never without his 
public, though many years. passed before he received Rossetti’s rewards. 
He could rely on the Ionides, Leathart, Frederick Leyland, Huth, 
Alexander, Rawlinson, Anderson Rose, Jameson, Chapman, Potter. 
But, unlike Rossetti, he wanted to show his work and receive for it 
rewards. As far back as 1864 Fantin wrote to Edwin Edwards of 
Whistler’s perseverance, his determination to get into the Salon, a phase 
of his character Fantin said he had not known. Whistler’s absence 
from exhibitions was not his fault. It was his hatred of rejection and 
fear of being badly hung that drove him from them. 

The tyranny of the Academy was no new thing. The opening 
1868-70] 109 


James McNer1tt WHISsTLER 


of the exhibition was every year the occasion of scandal and of protest 
against an institution that rejected and still rejects distinguished 
artists. One gallery after another took up the outsiders. After the 
Berners Street Gallery came the Dudley, which, in 1867, added to its 
show of water-colours a show of oils ; in 1868, the Corinthian Gallery 
in Argyll Street; in 1869, the Select Supplementary Exhibition in 
Bond Street—these last two poor affairs more apt to justify than expose 
the Academy. Dealers came to the rescue: the French Gallery in 
Pall Mall, and the Society of French Artists, where Durand-Ruel 
brought his collection in 1870, and, under the management of M. Charles 
Deschamps, gave exhibitions until 1877. In the French Gallery and 
with M. Deschamps Whistler showed many times. He contributed 
often to the Dudley from 1871, and there the next year, 1872, exhibited 
for the first time a Nocturne. His use of titles to explain his intention 
was now so well established that in 1872, when The White Girl and 
the Princesse were in the International Exhibition at South Kensington, 
they were catalogued as Symphony in White, No. I., and Variations in 
Flesh Colour, Blue, and Grey, later changed to Grey and Rose ; and he 
supplied the explanation, printed in the “ Programme of Reception.” 
They were ‘‘the complete results of harmonies obtained by em- 
ploying the infinite tones and variations of a limited number of 
colours.” 

His portrait of his mother was sent to the Academy of 1872— 
Arrangement in Grey and Black: Portrait of the Painter's Mother. 
It was refused. Madox Brown wrote to George Rae: “I hear 
that Whistler has had the portrait of his mother turned out. If so, 
it is a shame, because I saw the picture, and know it to be good and 
beautiful, though, I suppose, not to the taste of Messrs. Ansdell and 
Dobson.” 

Sir William Boxall threatened to resign from the Council if the 
portrait was not hung, for he would not have it said that a committee 
to which he belonged had rejected it. Similar threats have been heard 
in recent years, and the rejected work has stayed out, and the Acade- 
micians have stayed in. Boxall would not yield, and the picture was 
hung, not well, yet not out of sight ; groups, it is said, were always 
gathered before it to laugh. Still, there it was, the last picture by 
Whistler at the Academy, where nothing of his was again seen, save 
110 [1872 


CHELSEA Days 


one etching in 1879: Putney Bridge, published by the Fine Art Society 
and probably sent by them. 

The whole affair made talk. But 1872 is interesting, above all, 
as the year when Whistler first exhibited a portrait as an Arrangement 
and an impression of night as a Nocturne. 

As it was the last year he showed a picture in the Academy, it may 
be as well to complete here our account of his relations with this 
institution. It is said that he put his name down, or allowed it to 
be put down, for election. He was never elected. Other Americans 
were, for the Royal Academy is so broad in its constitution that an 
artist need not be an Englishman, need not be resident in Great Britain, 
~ need not have shown on its walls to become a member or honorary 
member. But though during all these years and until the day of his 
death Whistler would have accepted election, we have never heard 
that he obtained a single vote. George Boughton, an American 
artist and a member of the Royal Academy, explained the Academic 
attitude when he ‘said that if Whistler had “ behaved himself” he 
would have been President. Even this concession Boughton qualified : 
“* Now, if anyone knowing Whistler and me should go about thinking 
me serious in imagining that he would make a good President—even 
of an East End boxing club—such persons live in dense error.” 

The only comment to make is that Boughton did not understand 
Whistler, and, in company with the Academy, had not the least artistic 
sense, or even business appreciation in this matter. 

Whistler would have accepted election for one reason only—because 
of the official rank it would have given him in England. Other Americans 
hustled to get it ; he expected it as an honour which he deserved. He 
knew himself to be more distinguished than any member of the Royal 
Academy. Though recognition was withheld during his lifetime, 
several Academicians attempted to secure for the Academy a posthu- 
mous glory by endeavouring to get together an exhibition of his works 
the winter after his death. It would, indeed, have been irony if the 
Academy had, in return for its neglect of Whistler, got the kudos and 
cash as their reward. Another instance of what Americans call 
“ praft ”? is in the absence from the Chantrey Collection of a picture 
by Whistler, and the presence of the work of the Academicians who 
administer the Fund. The Trustees, although they have bought their 
1872] III 


James McNeritt WHisTLER 


own work, paying as much as one thousand pounds to Sir Edward J. 
Poynter, three thousand to Sir Hubert von Herkomer, three thousand 
and fifty to Lord Leighton, two thousand to Sir J. E. Millais, Bart., 
over two thousand to Mr. Frank Dicksee, two thousand to Sir W. Q. 
Orchardson, two thousand to Vicat Cole, who are or were members of 
the Council of the Academy, never even offered the sixty pounds for 
which they might have bought Whistler’s Nocturne in Blue and Gold : 
Old Battersea Bridge, since purchased for two thousand by public 
subscription and given to the Tate Gallery. Is it any wonder that 
Whistler, disgusted with such conduct, especially on the part of his 
fellow countrymen, members of the Academy, and others, who might 
have elected him, left as his only written request relative to his pictures 
we have seen, the wish that none should ever find a place in any 
English Gallery ? Death did not spare him Academical jealousy. 
Not content with ignoring him during his lifetime, officially insulting 
his memory after his death, Sir Edward Poynter, then Director, when 
he hung Old Battersea Bridge in the National Gallery, affixed to it, 
or allowed to be affixed, a label on which Whistler’s name was mis- 
spelt, Whistler described as of the British School, the title of the 
picture incorrectly given, while Whistler’s decorated frame was hung 
upside down. The picture has since, by the irony of fate, been placed 
in the Gallery of Modern British Art ! 


CHAPTER XIII: NOCTURNES. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN 
SEVENTY-TWO TO EIGHTEEN SEVENTY-EIGHT. 


WHISTLER was the first to paint the night. The blue mystery that 
veils the world from dusk to dawn is in the colour-prints of Hiroshige. 
But the wood-block cannot give the depth of darkness, the method 
makes a convention of colour. Hiroshige saw and felt the beauty and ~ 
invented a scheme by which to suggest it on the block, but he could not 
render the night as Whistler rendered it on canvas. 

Though colour-prints suggested the Nocturnes, they were only 
the suggestion. Whistler never copied Japanese technique. But ~ 
Japanese composition impressed him—the arrangement, the pattern, — 
and at times the detail. The high or low horizon, the line of a bridge — 
112 [1872 — 


a ee a a 


EA PRINCESSE DU PAYS DE LA PORCELAINE 
ROSE AND SILVER 


OIL 


In the Charles L, Freer Collection, National Gallery of American Art 
(See page 87) 


(See page 90) 


| 
| 
; 


Wel ores ne me ce 


VARIATIONS IN VIOLET AND GREEN 
OIL 
In the possession of Sir Charles McLaren, Bart. 
Showing frame designed by Whistler 
Plaque inscribed Whistler at bottom not by artist 


ore eee 


% 
Ms. 


NoctTurNES 


over a river, the spray of foliage in the foreground, the golden curve 
of a falling rocket, the placing of a figure on the shore, the signature in 
the oblong panel, show how much he learned. He abandoned the 
Japanese convention in.a few years, but he never gave up, he developed 
rather, what he always spoke of as the Japanese method of drawing.* 
He translated Japanese art—translate is the word—though he said 
that he “ carried on tradition.” His idea was not to go to the Japanese 
as greater than himself, but to learn what he could from them and 
make another work of art; a work founded on tradition no less than 
theirs, and yet as Western as theirs was Eastern. 

Night, beautiful everywhere from Valparaiso to Venice, is never 
more beautiful than in London. First he painted the Thames in the 
grey day, but, as time went on, he painted it in the blue night. Only 
those who have lived by the river for years, as we have, can realise the 
truth as well as the beauty of the Nocturnes. He still, like Courbet, 
“loved things for what they were,” but he chose the exquisite, the 
poetic. The foolishness of Nature never appealed to him. But 
Courbet was no more a realist than Whistler if realism means truth. 

The long nights on the river were followed by long days in the 
studio. In the end he gave up making notes. It was impossible for 
him to work in colour at night, and he had to trust to his memory. 
In his portraits and his pictures done by day he had a model. But 
looking at colour and arrangement by night, and retaining the memory 
‘until the next morning simply means a longer interval between 
observation and execution. And, carrying on the tradition of the 
Japanese and the method of drawing from memory advocated by 
Lecog de Boisbaudran, and practised by many of his most distinguished 
contemporaries in France, Whistler developed his powers of observation. 
Even then, as he said, to retain the memory of the subject required 
as hard training as a football player goes through. His method was to 
go out at night, and all his pupils or followers agree in this, stand before 
his subject and look at it, then turn his back on it and repeat to whoever 
was with him the arrangement, the scheme of colour, and as much of 
the detail as he wanted. The listener corrected errors when they 
occurred, and, after Whistler had looked long enough, he went to bed 
with nothing in his head but his subject.» The next morning, as he 

* See Chapter XXII. - 
1872-78 | H 113 


James McNertt WHIsTLER 


told his apprentice, Mrs. Clifford Addams, if he could see upon the 
untouched canvas the completed picture, he painted it; if not, he passed 
another night in looking at the subject. However, it was not two 
nights’ observation alone, but the knowledge of a lifetime that enabled 
him to paint the Nocturnes. This power to see a finished picture 
on a bare canvas is possessed by all great artists. But the greater the 
artist the more he sees and the better he presents it. 

Whistler said “‘ Nature put him out,” because the arrangement as 
he found it put him out; Nature is never right. Few painters have 
understood the art of selection, and here Hiroshige and the other 
Japanese were of use. He went to Nature for the motive, to the Japanese 
for the design. This was why he said Nature was at once his master 
and his servant. The Nocturnes looked so simple to a public trained 
by Ruskin to believe that signs of labour are the chief merits in a 
picture, that they seemed unfinished—just knocked off. Yet his letters 
to Fantin are full of regret for his slowness: “Fe suits si lent... . 
Les choses ne vont pas vite. . . . Fe produts peu parceque 7 efface tout /” 
No one knew the hard work that produced the simplicity. In no other 
paintings was Whistler as successful in following his own precepts and 
concealing traces of toil. One touch less and nothing would be left ; 
one touch more and the spell would be broken, and night stripped of 
mystery. To give the silhouette of bridge or building against the 
sky ; the lines of light trailing through the water or leading to infinite 
distance; the boats, ghosts fading into the ghostly river; the fall of 
rockets through shadowy air—to give all these things, and yet to keep 
them shrouded in the transparency of darkness was the problem he 
set himself in the Nocturnes painted in the little second-storey back 
room at Chelsea. It was the night he saw and studied at Cremorne, 


darker, more mysterious for the sudden flare of the fireworks, for the | 


glow in which little figures danced, for the hint of draperies passing 
in and out of the shadows—night that toned the tawdry gardens and 
their vulgar crowd into beauty. 

Now everyone can see, and “ night is like a Whistler,” for Whistler 
compelled people to look at his pictures, until it has become impossible 
to look at night without seeing the Nocturnes. He painted the im- 
pression that night made on him, and the great artist, like the great 
author, moves people until they think they see things as he does. Even 
114 [1872-78 


" io my "i FA P 
i | Gee Tena 


NoctTurNES 


in that ever-quoted passage from The Ten o’Clock, he does not pretend 
to see Nature as people see her or as Nature seems to be; his concern 
is with the impression that Nature at night made on him, and in this 
he was an impressionist. | 

The brothers Greaves bought his materials and prepared his canvas 
and colours. ‘“ I know all these things because I passed days and weeks 
in the place standing by him,” Walter Greaves has said to us. Whistler 
remade his brushes, heating them over a candle, melting the glue and 
pushing the hair into the shape he wanted. Greaves says that the 
colours were mixed with linseed oil and turpentine. Whistler told us 
that he used a medium composed of copal, mastic, and turpentine. 
The colours were arranged upon a palette, a large oblong board some 
two feet by three, with the butterfly inlaid in one corner and sunken 
boxes for brushes and tubes round the edges. This palette was laid 
upon a table. He had at various periods two or three; and at least 
one stand, with many tiny drawers, upon which the palette fitted. 
At the top of the palette the pure colours were placed, though, more 
frequently, there were no pure colours at all. Large quantities of 
different tones of the prevailing colour in the picture to be painted 
were mixed, and so much of the medium was used that he called it 
“sauce.” Greaves says that the Nocturnes were mostly painted on 
a very absorbent canvas, sometimes on panels, sometimes on bare brown 
holland, sized. For the blue Nocturnes, the canvas was covered with 
a red ground, or the panel was of mahogany, which the pupils got from 
their boat-building yard, the red forcing up the blues laid on it. Others 
were done on a warm black, and for the fireworks there was a lead 
ground. Or, if the night was grey, then, Whistler said, “‘ the sky is grey, 
and the water is grey, and, therefore, the canvas must be grey.” Only 
once within Greaves’ memory was the ground white. The ground for 
his Nocturnes, like the paper for his pastels, was chosen of the prevailing 
tone of the picture he wanted to paint or of a colour which would give 
him that tone, not to save work, but to avoid fatiguing the canvas. 

When Whistler had arranged his colour-scheme on the palette, 
the canvas, which the pupils prepared, was stood on an easel, but so 
much “ sauce ”’ was used that frequently it had to be thrown flat on the 
floor to keep the whole thing from running off. He washed the liquid 
colour on, lightening and darkening the tones as he worked. In the 
1872-78] II5 


James McNett WuisTLER 


Nocturnes, the sky and water are rendered with great sweeps of the 
brush of exactly the right tone. How many times he made and wiped 
out that sweeping tone is another matter. When it was right, there it 
stayed. With his life’s knowledge of both the effects he wanted to paint 
and the way to paint them, at times, as he admits himself, he completed 
a Nocturne in a day. In some he got his effect at once, in others it 
came only after endless failures. If the tones were right, he took them 
off his palette and kept them until the next day, in saucers, or gallipots, 
under water, so that he might carry on his work in the same way with 
the same tones. Mrs. Anna Lea Merritt tells us that when she lived 
in Cheyne Walk, she remembers ‘‘ seeing the Nocturnes set out along 
the garden wall to bake in the sun.”” Some were laid aside to dry slowly 
in the studio, some were put in the garden or on the roof to dry quickly. 
Sometimes they dried out like body-colour in the most unexpected 
fashion. It was a time of tireless research. He had to invent every- 
thing, though he profited by the technical training he had gained in 
painting the Szx Projects. 

Whistler first called his paintings of night Moonlights. Nocturne 
was Mr. Leyland’s suggestion, as we have heard from Mrs. Leyland, 
and her son-in-law, Val Prinsep, stated in the Art Fournal (August 
1892), that Whistler wrote to Leyland : 

“ T can’t thank you too much for the name Nocturne.as the title 
for my Moonlights. You have no idea what an irritation it proves 
to the critics, and consequent pleasure to me; besides it is really so 
charming, and does so poetically say all I want to say and no more than 
I wish.” 

Whether to mystify, or because he saw something new in his pictures, 
Whistler repeatedly changed their titles, especially of the Nocturnes, 
and repeatedly exhibited different pictures with the same title. It is 
true, as Mr. Bernard Sickert writes: ‘ such alterations made by the 
artist himself stultify the whole idea, and prove that the analogy with 
music does not hold consistently. Any musician would tell us that 
we could not change the title of Symphony in C minor to Sonata in 
G major without making it an absurdity.” 

That he should either not have realised this fact, or else have 
disregarded it deliberately, is the more extraordinary because every 
Nocturne represents a different effect rendered in a different fashion. 
116 | [1878 


NocTuRNES 


Although he altered his titles, nothing offended him more than when 
others tampered with them or stole them. 

The painting of the Nocturnes continued for many years, and in 
many places. But the greater number were painted when he lived at 
Lindsey Row, most from his windows, and few took him beyond 
Battersea and Westminster. He resented it when people suggested 
literary titles for them, and he put his resentment into words that 
“‘make history ” in The Red Rag, one of the most interesting documents 
in The Gentle Art, published originally in the World (May 22, 1878) : 

“My picture of a Harmony in Grey and Gold is an illustration 
of my meaning—a snow scene with a single black figure and a lighted 
tavern. I care nothing for the past, present, or future of the black 
figure, placed there because the black was wanted at that spot. All 
that I know is that my combination of grey and gold is the basis of 
the picture. Now this is precisely what my friends cannot grasp. 
They say, ‘ Why not call it “ Trotty Veck,” and sell it for a round 
harmony of golden guineas ?’ ” 

Lord Redesdale told us that it was he who suggested this title, 
gaily. Whistler assured another of his friends that he had only to write 
“‘ Father, dear Father, come home with me now ” on the painting for 
it to become the “ picture of the year.” Subject, sentiment, meaning 
were for him in the night itselfi—the night in its loveliness and mystery. 
There is no doubt that he carried tradition further and made 
greater advance in the Nocturnes than in any of his paintings. The 
subjects are the simplest—factories, bridges, boats and barges, shops, 
gardens—but in his hands they became things of beauty that will live 
for ever. The Nocturnes are not all moonlights ; we remember only 
a few in which the moon appears, some are illumined only by flickering 
lamplight. They are not invariably pictures of night, but at times of 
dawn or of twilight. Nocturnes, however, is the name Whistler chose 
for all, and by it they will always be known. 


1878] 117 


James McNeiLtt WHISTLER 


CHAPTER XIV: PORTRAITS. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN 
SEVENTY-ONE TO EIGHTEEN SEVENTY-FOUR. 


Wuite Whistler was painting the Nocturnes, he was working on the 
large portraits. The Mother was the first. We cannot say when he 
began it. He wrote of it to Fantin, promising to send a photograph, 
in 1871, but it was not shown until 1872. How many were the sittings, 
how often the work was scraped down or wiped out, no one will ever 
know. We have some interesting technical details from Walter Greaves. 
The portrait was painted on the back of a canvas, as J. saw when it was 
sent to the London Memorial Exhibition, as Otto Bacher saw when 
the picture was in Whistler’s studio in 1883 : 

“I noticed that it was painted on the back of a canvas, on the face 
of which was the portrait of a child. My remark, ‘Why, you have 
painted your mother on the back of a canvas!’ received simply the 
reply: ‘Isn’t that a good surface ?’ ” 

There was scarcely any paint used, Greaves says, the canvas being 
simply rubbed over to get the dress, and, as at first the dado had been 
painted across the canvas, it shows through the skirt. Harper Penning- 
ton says that the canvas, being absorbent, was stained all through from 
the painting on the face. But this does not alter Greaves’ statement. 
That wonderful handkerchief in the tired old hands, Greaves describes 
as ‘* nothing but a bit of white and oil.” 

What Whistler wanted was to place upon canvas a beautiful arrange- 
ment, a beautiful pattern, of colour and line. No painter since Hals 
and Velasquez thought so much of placing his figure on the canvas 
inside the frame. No painter since Velasquez understood so well the 
value of restrained line and restrained colour. The long, vertical 
and horizontal lines in the background, the footstool, the matting, 
the brushwork on the wall, add quietness to the portrait, tranquillity 
to the pose that could be kept for ever; a contrast to the frenzied 
squirms preferred by his predecessors, contemporaries, and successors. 
Hamerton thought he must have found this pose, or the hint for it, in 


the Agrippina at the Capitol in Rome, or in Canova’s statue of Napo- — 


leon’s mother at Chatsworth. If Whistler found it anywhere, except 
in his own studio, it could only have been at Haarlem, where Franz 


Hals’ old ladies sit together with the same serenity and are painted 


118 [1872 | 


PoRTRAITS 


in much the same scheme. Whistler had been to Holland and seen 
the beautiful group, and he was haunted by it. 

Whistler wrote to. Fantin that if the Mother marked any progress, 
it was in the science of colour. What he wanted people to see in it, 
he explained in The Red Rag: 

“Take the picture of my mother, exhibited at the Royal Academy 
as an Arrangement in Grey and Black. Now that is what it is. To me 
it is interesting as a picture of my mother; but what can or ought 
the public to care about the identity of the portrait ? ” 

And yet Swinburne was not alone in realising its “‘ intense pathos of 
significance and tender depth of expression,” while to a few Whistler 
gave a glimpse of the other side, as to Mr. Harper Pennington : 

“Did I ever tell you of an occasion when Whistler let me see him 
with the paint off—with his brave mask down? Once standing by me 
in his studio—Tite Street—we were looking at the Mother. I said some 
string of words about the beauty of the face and figure, and for some 
moments Jimmy looked and looked, but he said nothing. His hand 
was playing with that tuft upon his nether lip. It was, perhaps, two 
minutes before he spoke. ‘ Yes,’ very slowly, and very softly—‘ Yes, 
one does like to make one’s mummy just as nice as possible!’ ” 

Whistler told us that Madame Venturi, a friend of Carlyle’s, deter- 
mined that he too should be painted. 

“ T used to go often to Madame Venturi’s—I met Mazzini there, and 
Mazzini was most charming—and Madame Venturi often visited me, 
and one day she brought Carlyle. The Mother was there, and Carlyle 
saw it, and seemed to feel in it a certain fitness of things, as Madame 
Venturi meant he should—he liked the simplicity of it, the old lady 
sitting with her hands in her lap—and he said he would be painted. And 
he came one morning soon, and he sat down, and I had the canvas 
ready and the brushes and palette, and Carlyle said: ‘ And now, mon, 
fire away!’ That wasn’t my idea how work should be done. Carlyle 
realised it, for he added: ‘ If ye’re fighting battles or painting pictures, 
the only thing to do is to fire away!’ One day he told me of others 
who had painted his portrait. ‘There was Mr. Watts, a mon of note. 
And I went to his studio, and there was much meestification, and 
screens were drawn round the easel, and curtains were drawn, and I 
was not allowed to see anything. And then, at last, the screens were 
1872] 119 


James McNe1tt WuIsTLER 


put aside and there I was. And I looked. And Mr. Watts, a great 
mon, he said to me, ‘‘ How do you like it?”’ And then I turned to 
Mr. Watts, and I said, ‘‘ Mon, I would have ye know I am in the hobit 
of wurin’ clean lunen!”’” 

Carlyle told people that he sat there talking and talking, and that 
Whistler went on working and working and paid no attention to him 
whatever. Whistler found Carlyle a delightful person, and Carlyle 
found him a workman. And it has been said that they used to take 
walks together, but of this we have no record. 

Before the portrait was finished, Whistler had begun to paint Miss 
Alexander, and another story is of a meeting at the door between the 
old man coming out and the little girl going in. ‘“ Who is that?” 
he asked the maid. ‘‘ Miss Alexander, who is sitting to Mr. Whistler.” 
Carlyle shook his head. “ Puir lassie! Puir lassie!” Mrs. Leyland, 
at whose portrait also Whistler was working, remembered that Carlyle 
grumbled a good deal. Whistler, in the end, had, it is said, to get 
Phil Morris to sit for the coat. Walter Greaves’ memories are of 
impatience in the studio, especially when Carlyle saw Whistler working 
with small brushes, so that Whistler either worked with big brushes or 
pretended to. William Allingham wrote of the sittings in his diary: 

“Carlyle tells me he is sitting to Whistler. If C. makes signs of 
changing his position, W. screams out in an agonised tone: ‘ For God’s 
sake, don’t move!’ C. afterwards said that all W.’s anxiety seemed to 
be to get the coat painted to ideal perfection ; the face went for little. 
He had begun by asking two or three sittings, but managed to get a 
great many. At last C. flatly rebelled. He used to define W. as the 
most absurd creature on the face of the earth.” 

Around this portrait many legends are gathering. Mr. F. Ernest 
Jackson has told us that a few years ago, one evening in Hyde Park, 
he was seated on a bench sketching, and an old man came up to him 
and, seeing he was an artist, asked if he knew Whistler. Then 
the old man said that his father had posed for the picture. Whether 
this was Carlyle revisiting the haunts of his walks or a pure invention 
we do not know. Another tale is that Whistler never painted the pic- 
ture, which is the work of an anonymous Academician, done as a bet 
that he could do a Whistler—it is a pity the Academician never did any 
more. 

120 [1872 


PorTRAITS 


If Carlyle liked the portrait of the Mother, he must have liked his 
own. There is the same quiet balance, the same careful spacing. 
Take away either the circular print or the Butterfly in its circle, and 
the repose is gone. But with such care has every detail been arranged, 
one never thinks of the balance, the arabesque, the pattern. It is 
done, and all traces of the thought and the work are gone. One sees 
only the result Whistler meant should be seen. It has been criticised 
for showing a want of invention. But if the background and the 
arrangement are somewhat the same as in the Mother, it was because he 
was deliberately carrying out the same scheme. It was his Arrangement 
in Grey and Black, No. II. In the London Memorial Exhibition it 
hung opposite the Mother, and as they were seen together, the pose 
and colour and design belonged as inevitably to the nervous old man 
as to the old lady in her beautiful tranquillity. Whistler is also 
said to have made a study of Carlyle’s head, owned by Mr. Burton 
Mansfield, and there is a small study of the pose on the back of a 
canvas, once owned by Greaves. 

The Harmony in Grey and Green: Portrait of Miss Alexander, 
a commission from Mr. W. C. Alexander, was painted at the 
same time, and proves how little Whistler’s invention was at fault. 
There was no repetition. The little girl, in her white and green 
frock, holding at her side her grey feathered hat, butterflies hovering 
about her, the weariness of the pose expressed in the pouting red lips, 
as she stands by the grey wall with its long lines of black, is as familiar 
as Velasquez’ Infantas. Less known is Whistler’s care in every detail 
to make it a masterpiece. He, or his mother, gave Mrs. Alexander 
directions as to the quality of the muslin for the gown, where it was to 
be bought, the width of the frills, the ruffles at the neck, the ribbon 
bows, the way the gown was to be laundried. And only after repeatedly 
seeing and studying the picture, does one learn his care in weaving the 
colour through the design. He called the portrait Harmony in Grey 
and Green, but the colours which bind the arrangement together, 
which play all through it, are green and gold. So wonderfully are 
these colours used like threads in tapestry that one does not see 
them, one feels the result. As always, there was the great simple 
design; the pose of Velasquez, the decoration of Japan, worked out 
in his own way. The gold runs along the top of the dado; tiny gold 
1872] 121 


James McNerty WHIsSTLER 


buckles fasten the rosettes of the shoes; there is a gold pin in the 
hair; the gold of the daisies is repeated in the butterflies which 
flutter above the head; a note of gold is in the pile of drapery, and 
the floor has a suggestion of gold in the matting. Green plays the 
same note. The green sash is carried down by the green feather 
of the hat, lost in the shadow, which is filled with green and gold. 
And the green of the daisies is repeated in the green of the drapery. 
It is not until one has gone all over the picture that these things 
become evident. The shoes look perfectly black, and so does the 
dado, and yet there is no pure black anywhere. The whole is bound 
together by this grey, green, black, and gold scheme running through 
the composition. It is a perfect harmony. And so subtle is 
it, that only the result is evident, never the means by which it was 
obtained. 

The story of the sittings we have from Miss Cicely Alexander 
(Mrs. Spring-Rice) : 

“My father wanted him to paint us all, I believe, beginning with 
the eldest (my sister, whom he afterwards began to paint, but whose 
portrait was never finished). But after coming down to see us, he wrote 
and said he would like to begin with ‘ the light arrangement,’ meaning 
me, as my sister was dark. So I was the first victim, and I’m afraid 
I rather considered that I was a victim all through the sittings, or 
rather standings, for he never let me change my position, and I believe 
I sometimes used to stand for hours at a time. I know I used to get 
very tired and cross, and often finished the days in tears. This was 
especially when he had promised to release me at a given time to go 
to a dancing-class, but when the time came I was still standing, and the 
minutes slipped away, and he was quite absorbed and had quite for- 
gotten all about his promise, and never noticed the tears; he used to 
stand a good way from his canvas, and then dart at it and then dart 
back, and he often turned round to look in a looking-glass that hung 
over the mantelpiece at his back—lI suppose, to see the reflection of his 
painting. Although he was rather inhuman about letting me stand 
on for hours and hours, as it seemed to me at the time, he was most kind 
in other ways. If a blessed black fog came up from the river, and I 
was allowed to get down, he never made any objection to my poking 
about among his paints, and I even put charcoal eyes to some of his 
122 [1872 


PorTRAITS 


sketches of portraits done in coloured chalks on brown paper, and he 
also constantly promised to paint my doll, but this promise was never 
kept. I was painted at the little house in Chelsea, and at the time he 
was decorating the staircase ; it was to have a dado of gold, and it was 
all done in gold-leaf, and laid on by himself, I believe ; he had number- 
less little books of gold-leaf lying about, and any that weren’t exactly 
of the old-gold shade he wanted, he gave to me. 

“Mrs. Whistler was living then, and used to preside at delightful 
American luncheons, but I don’t remember that she ever came into 
the studio—a servant used to be sent to tell him lunch was ready, and 
then he went on again as before. He painted, and despair filled my soul, 
and I believe it was generally teatime before we went to those lunches, 
at which we had hot biscuits and tinned peaches, and other unwhole- 
some things, and I believe the biscuits came out of a little oven in the 
chimney, though I can’t quite think how that could have been. The 
studio was at the back of the house, and the drawing-room looked over 
the river, and we seldom went into it, but I remember that he had mat- 
ting on the floor, and a large Japanese basin with water and gold-fish in 
it. I never met Mr. Carlyle in the studio, although he was being painted 
at the same time, but he shook hands with me at the private view at 
the Grosvenor Gallery, where the two portraits were exhibited for 
the first time. [This must have been at Whistler’s own exhibition 
in 1874.] I didn’t appreciate that honour at the time, any more than 
I appreciated being painted by Mr. Whistler, and I’m afraid all my 
memories only show that I was a very grumbling disagreeable little 
girl. Of course, I was too young to appreciate Mr. Whistler himself, 
though afterwards we were very good friends when I grew older, and 
when he used to come to my father’s house and make at once for the 
portrait with his eyeglass up.” 

It is said that tears were not only the little girl’s, but Whistler’s, 
and that there were seventy sittings before he finished. Mrs. Spring- 
Rice writes nothing about the number of times the picture was rubbed 
out and recommenced. He was beginning to put in the entire scheme 
at once, but on such large canvases this was difficult. Walter Greaves 
says that the picture was painted on an absorbent canvas, and on a 
distemper ground. There is also a study for the head. 

Whistler was as minute in his directions for the portrait of Miss 
1872] 123 


James McNertt WuistTLER 


May Alexander. He recommended to Mrs. Alexander a milliner 
who sold wonderful “ picture hats”; he suggested that he should 
paint the portrait in the house at Campden Hill, so that he could see 
the effect of the picture in the drawing-room where it was to hang. 
But it remains a sketch of a girl in riding-habit, drawing on her gloves, 
at her side a pot of flowers, the one detail carried out. He made a 
number of other sketches in oils, chalk, pen and ink, of the children, 
and there is a study for Miss May’s head also. But only the seaieaiis:, 
ment in Grey and Green was finished. 

Frederick Leyland, the wealthy shipowner, who had met Whistler 
as early as 1867, about this time commissioned Whistler to paint his 
four children, Mrs. Leyland, and himself. Leyland had not yet bought 
his London house, but often came up to town, and Whistler made 
long visits at Speke Hall, Leyland’s place near Liverpool. Mrs. 
Whistler spent months there. The record of his visits is in the etchings 
and dry-points of Speke Hall and Speke Shore, Shipping at Liverpool, 
The Dam Wood, and the portraits in many mediums. Speke Hall, 
Whistler said, put him in better mood for work. The house was not 
far from the sea, where he found much to do. But the beach was 
flat, at low tide the sea ran away from him, and at high tide the skies 
were wrong or the wind blew, and when the sea failed he turned to 
the portraits. The big canvases travelled with him, backward and 
forward, from Speke Hall to London, and the sittings were con- 
tinued in both places. They all sat to him. The children hated 
posing as much as they delighted in the painter. The son, after three 
sittings, refused to sit again, which is to be regretted, for the pastel 
of him, lounging in a chair, with big hat pushed back and long legs 
stretched out, is full of boyhood. There are pastels of the three little 
girls, sketches in pen and ink and pencil, one among the few studies for 
etchings, and the dry-points. Of Florence Leyland, a large, full- 
length oil was started, the first of his Blue Girls in which he wished to 
paint blue on blue as he had painted white on white. Another portrait 
of her was never finished and, we-believe, never exhibited until it was 
purchased, in 1906, for the Brooklyn Museum. The full-length of 
Leyland was the only one completed. Of this there is a small oil 
study. 

Whistler painted Leyland standing, in evening dress, with the ruffled 
124 [1872 


| 
‘ 
i 


koe Re Ras 


SYMPHONY IN WHITE. NO. II 
THE LITTLE WHITE GIRL 
OIL 
In the National Gallery, London 


Showing the original frame with early Butterflies and Swinburne’s verses on it. 
Photograph loaned by W. H. Low, Esq. 


(See page 92) 


tii 


WHISTLER 


PORTRAIT OF DR 


L 


I 


ce) 


Esq 


In the possession of Burton Mansfield, 


(See page 95) 


PorTRAITS 


shirt he always wore, against a dark background, the first arrangement 
of black on black. Leyland was good about standing, we know from 
Mrs. Leyland, but he had not much time, and few portraits gave 
Whistler more trouble. Leyland told Val Prinsep that Whistler nearly 
cried over the drawing of the legs. Greaves says that “ he got into an 
awful mess over it,” painted it out again and again, and finally had ina 
model to pose for it nude. It was finished in the winter of 1873. In the 
portrait of Leyland he began to suppress the background, to put the 
figures into the atmosphere in which they stood, without accessories. 
The problem was the atmospheric envelope, to make the figures stand 
in this atmosphere, as far within their frames as he stood from them 
when he painted, a problem at which he worked as long as he lived. 
Mrs. Leyland had more leisure than her husband, and the sittings 
amused her. She had sat to Rossetti, she was to sit to others. She 
was beautiful, with wonderful red hair. Whistler made a dry-point 
of her, The Velvet Gown, and in black velvet she wanted to be painted. 
But he preferred a dress in harmony with her hair, and designed rose 
draperies falling in sweeping curves, and he placed her against a rose- 
flushed wall with a spray of rose almond blossoms at her side. In no 
other portrait did he attempt a scheme of colour at once so sumptuous 
and so delicate. The pose was natural to her, she said, though he made 
a number of pastel schemes before he painted it. Her back is turned, 
her arms fall loosely, her hands clasped behind her, her head in profile. 
Mrs. Leyland remembered days when, at the end of the pose, the 
portrait looked as if it needed only a few hours’ work. But in the 
morning she would find it rubbed out and all the work to be done again. 
Notwithstanding the innumerable sittings, one of Whistler’s models, 
Maud Franklin, whom he so often etched and painted, was called in 
to pose for the gown. Whistler knew what he wanted, and nothing 
else would satisfy him. It must be beautiful to be worthy of the 
weariness it caused her, he told Mrs. Leyland, and he was trying for 
the little more that meant perfection. The portrait was never finished, 
and yet it could not be lovelier. It was a problem, not of luminous 
dark, but of luminous light, and the accessories have not been suppressed. 
The matting on the floor, the dado, and the spray of almond blossoms 
- are more elaborately carried out than the detail of any other portrait. 
What worried him, and probably prevented the picture being finished, 
1873] 125 


James McNertt WuiIsTLER 


were the hands, almost untouched. It was not that he could not draw 
hands, for they are beautifully drawn sometimes, notably in the etch- 
ings. But he rarely painted them well. He nearly always left them to 
the last, and some of his later pictures were unfinished because he could 
not get the hands right. In the Sarasate, The Little White Girl, the 
Symphony in White, No. III., the hands are beautifully painted. Some 
one has said that an artist is known by his painting of hands. These 
three pictures prove that Whistler could paint hands, but it is as true 
that he did not paint them when he could help it. 

The portrait of Mrs. Louis Huth was not only begun but finished 
during these years. It is Holbein-like in its dignity, its sobriety, the 
flat modelling, the exquisite rendering of the lace at the throat and the 
wrists. Mrs. Huth wears the black velvet Mrs. Leyland wanted to 
wear, and the background is black of wonderful, luminous, intense 
depth. She, too, stands with her back turned, and her head in profile. 
In this portrait, as in the full-length Leyland, Whistler carried out his 
method of putting in the whole subject at once. The background 
was as much a part of the design as the figure. If anything went wrong 
anywhere the whole had to come out and be started again. It was 
a difficult problem, but the theory taught by Gleyre, and developed in 
the Nocturnes, was perfected in the portraits of Frederick Leyland and 
Mrs. Huth. 

Mrs. Leyland sometimes met Mrs. Huth as they came and went, 
and this fixes the date of the portrait. Mrs. Huth was not strong, 
and Whistler exhausted the strongest who posed for him. Almost 
daily, during one summer, he kept her standing for three hours without 
rest. At last she rebelled. Watts, she said, who had painted her had 
not treated her in that way. “ And still, you know, you come to me! ” 
was Whistler’s comment. He had some mercy, however, and at times 
a model stood for her dress. 

After the Academy of 1874 opened with nothing of his in it, Whistler 
took matters into his own hands, and, like Courbet in 1855, and Manet 
in 1867, organised a show of his own—his first “‘ one man” show. The 
gallery was at No. 48 Pall Mall, and the collection included these large 
portraits, a few Nocturnes, one or two earlier paintings, and one or 
two of the Projects. ‘Thirteen in all. There were fifty etchings. 
The walls were grey, the exhibits were well spaced, there were palms 
126 [1874 


PorTRAITS 


and flowers, blue pots and bronzes. He designed the card of invitation, 
the simple card he always used, and his mother and Greaves wrote the 
names and addresses, “ all making Butterflies as hard as we could,” 
Walter Greaves says, rushing out and posting the cards until the letter- 
boxes of Chelsea were in a state of congestion. The private view was 
on June 6. The catalogue is vague. 

The exhibition was a shock to London. The decorations seemed an 
indiscretion, for no one before had suggested to people, whose standard 
was the Academy, that a show of pictures might be beautiful. The 
work scandalised a generation blinded by the yearly Academic bazaar ; 
they could not see the beauty of flat modelling and flesh low in tone, 
they preferred the “foolish sunset” to the poetry of night. But 
the pictures could have been forgiven more easily than the titles. 
From the moment he exhibited them as Arrangements and Nocturnes, 
his reputation for eccentricity was established. He wrote in The 
Gentle Art : 

“‘T know that many good people think my nomenclature funny and 
myself ‘ eccentric.’ Yes, ‘ eccentric’ is the adjective they find for me. 
The vast majority of English folk cannot and will not consider a picture 
as a picture, apart from any story which it may be supposed to tell. . . . 
As music is the poetry of sound, so is painting the poetry of sight, and the 
subject-matter has nothing to do with harmony of sound or of colour.” 

Well received at first, his position in public favour had of late 
hung in the balance. The exhibition weighed in the scales against him, 
and for almost twenty years to come, ridicule was his portion. The 
Atheneum and the Saturday Review ignored the show. The Pall Mall 
saw in it more intellect than imagination. Here and there was a polite 
murmur of “ noble conception ” and “ Velasquez touch.” Of all that 
was said Whistler singled out for notice then, and preservation after- 
wards, the comments of a forgotten journal, the Hour. It has been 
wondered why he noticed papers of small importance. When he 
answered the critics and kept the correspondence, it was “‘ to make 
history,” he said, and he selected what he thought important, though 
it might come from an unimportant source. The Hour suggested 
that the best work was not of recent date; Whistler wrote to remove 
“‘ the melancholy impression ” ; and notice and letter ‘“‘ make history,”’ 
for it was about this time that English critics, following the lead of the 
1874] 127 


James McNertit WuistLer 


French, were beginning to say that he did not fulfil his early promise, 
and it is recorded in The Gentle Art. 

The pictures of this period that remain may seem few in number, 
But others were completed or in progress, and disappeared before they 
were exhibited or seen outside the studio. We have reason to believe, 
however, that some have been recently discovered and eventually will 
not be lost to the world. 


CHAPTER XV: THE OPEN DOOR. THE YEAR EIGHTEEN 
SEVENTY-FOUR AND AFTER. 


** WHISTLER laughed all his troubles away,” it has been said. When 
the Academy rejected him, and the critics sneered at his pictures 
hung in other galleries, and the public took the critics seriously, he 
laughed the louder, and felt the more. English ears shrank from 
his laugh—“ his strident peacock laugh,” Sir Sidney Colvin called it. 

“He was a man who could never bear to be alone,” Mr. 
Percy Thomas remembers. ‘‘ The door in Lindsey Row was always 
open,” and Whistler liked to think that his friends’ doors were 
open to him. Lord Redesdale, who came to live in the Row in 1875, 
said that Whistler was always running in and out. Through his 
own open door strange people drifted. If they amused him he forgave 
them however they presumed, and they usually did presume. There 
was a man who, he told us, came to dine one evening, and, asking to 
stay overnight, remained three years : 

“Well, you know, there he was; and that was the way he had 
always lived—the prince of parasites! He was a genius, a musician, 
the first of the ‘ A’sthetes,’ before the silly name was invented. He 
hadn’t anything to do; he didn’t do anything but decorate the dinner- 
table, arrange the flowers, and then play the piano and talk. He 
hadn’t any enthusiasm ; that’s why he was so restful. He was always 
ready to go to Cremorne with me. At moments my mother objected 
to such a loafer about the house. And I would say to her, ‘ Well, 
but, my dear mummy, who else is there to whom we could say, “ Play,” 
and he would play, and “ Stop playing,” and he would stop right 
away!’ Then I was ill. He couldn’t be trusted with a message 
128 [1874 — 


THe Oren Door 


to the doctor or the druggist, and he was only in the way. But he 
had the good sense to see it, and to suggest it was time to be going ; 
so he left for somebody else! It never occurred to him there was any 
reason he shouldn’t live like that.” 

We have heard of many others. One, to whom Whistler entrusted 
the money for the weekly bills, gave lunches to his friends and sent 
flowers and chocolates right and left, while Whistler’s debt multiplied. 

Artists and art students came in through the open door to see 
and to learn, and were welcomed. If they came to loaf and to play, 
they paid for it. They ran errands, posted letters, sat in the corner, 
interviewed greater bores than themselves. They had to give up 
their time, and then the end came, and out they went. 

One story in Chelsea is of Barthe, who not only taught art but 
sold tapestry. Whistler bought a number of things from him. ‘“ But 
vill he pay, zis Vistlaire, vill he pay ?”’ Barthe asked, and at last one 
_ evening he went to Lindsey Row. A cab was at the door. The maid 
said Whistler was not in, but Barthe heard his voice and pushed past, 
and said afterwards : 

“‘ Upstairs, I find him, before a little picture painting, and behind 
him ze bruzzers Greaves holding candle. And Vistlaire he say, ‘ You 
ze very man I vant; hold a candle!’ And JI hold a candle. And 
Vistlaire he paint, and he paint, and zen he take ze picture, and he 
go downstair, and he get in ze cab, and he drive off, and we hold ze 
candle, andI seehimno more. Mon Dieu, il est terrible, ce Vistlatre !” 
But he was paid the next day. 

Few men depended more on companionship than Whistler, and 
to few was the companionship women alone can give more essential. 
All his life he retained his cwur de femme, and most of his friends were 
women. For years, until her health broke down, his mother was with 
him. Many wondered, with Val Prinsep, who thought Whistler “‘ always 
acting a part,” whether “behind the poseur, there was not quite a 
different Whistler. Those who saw him with his mother were con- 
scious of the fact that the irrepressible Jimmy was very human. No 
one could have been a better son, or more attentive to his mother’s 
wishes. Sometimes old Mrs. Whistler, who was a stern Presbyterian 
in her religion, must have been very trying to her son. Yet Jimmy, 
though he used to give a queer smile when he mentioned them, never 
1874] I 129 


James McNeiLtut WHIsTLER 


in any way complained of the old lady’s strict Sabbatarian notions, 
to which he bowed without remonstrance.” 

The models drifting in and out of the open door were mostly 
women. He liked to have them with him, and felt it necessary to 
see them about the studio, for, as he watched their movements, they 
would take the pose he wanted, or suggest a group, an arrangement. 
An admirable example is the Whistler in his Studio, done in the first 
house in Lindsey Row. It was a beautiful study, he wrote to Fantin, 
for a big picture like the Hommage d Delacroix, with Fantin, Albert 
Moore, and himself, the ‘“‘ White Girl”? on a couch, and la Faponatse 
walking about, grouped together in his studio: all that would shock 
the Academicians. The colour was to be dainty; he in pale grey, 
Jo in white, la Faponaise in flesh-colour, Albert Moore and Fantin 
to give the black note. The canvas was to be ten feet by six. If he 
ever did more than the study of the two girls and himself, it has 
disappeared. The painting was owned by Mr. Douglas Freshfield, 
and now belongs to the Chicago Art Institute, and is as dainty as 
Whistler described it. He holds the small palette he sometimes used 
with raised edges to keep the liquid colour from running off, he wears 
the long-sleeved white waistcoat in which he worked, and he painted 
from the reflection in the mirror, for his brush is in his left hand. 
The two women most likely are the two models for Symphony in 
White, No. III., who have stopped posing. Another version of this 
studio interior is in the City of Dublin Art Gallery, but Whistler re- 
pudiated it. Mr. Gallatin says that Sir Hugh Lane, who presented the 
picture to the Dublin Gallery, gave it a very different record, holding 
that it was well known in Chelsea, that Whistler liked it, and eventually 
painted for Mr. Freshfield the version now in the Chicago Art Institute. 
The truth of the matter, however, is that not only did Whistler repudiate 
the Dublin picture, but, when it was shown as the original in the 
Whistler Memorial Exhibition in London, Mr. Freshfield demanded 
that this description be at once withdrawn or he would remove the 
picture and sue the International Society, who organised the Exhibition, 
for false statements and damages. Sir Hugh Lane did not produce 
during his lifetime one scrap of proof in corroboration of statements 


denied by Whistler, nor has any proof been produced since his death. — 


Another reason to doubt Lane’s description is that Whistler never 
130 [1874 


at 


oS ee es ae ne foe 


THE Orpen Door 


copied one of his pictures, and the Dublin Gallery’s version is a slavish 
copy, save in the colour scheme. Whistler never painted it. There is 
nothing else of the kind so complete as Whistler in his Studio, but there 
are innumerable studies of figures, reading or sewing, not posing, 
though the minute he started to draw them they had to pose. Every- 
body who was with him, and somebody always was, had to sit and be 
painted, etched, or drawn. 

Refugees from France in 1870 drifted through the open door, 
artists whose work was stopped by the Commune and who came to 
England to take it up again. There were Dalou, Professor Lantéri, 
and Tissot who, at Lindsey Row, found the inspiration for his pictures 
on the river. Fantin stayed in Paris, but later told stories of the siege 
which Whistler repeated to us. He asked Fantin what he did. “Me?” 
replied Fantin, “I hid in the cellar. ‘Fe suis poltron, mot.” One of 
Fantin’s many letters to Edwin Edwards shows Whistler’s hold over 
those who were drawn to him for a better reason than curiosity. It 
was long since Fantin had heard from Whistler, for whom, however, 
he wrote, his affection was that of a man for a mistress still loved despite 
the trouble she might give. He did not understand women, they 
frightened him, “ mats au fond, tout au fond, je sens que st 7’étais aime, 
je serais Pesclave le plus soumts et serais peut-étre capable de toutes les 
plus grandes folies. “Fe sens que c’est la méme chose pour Whistler: sal 
savait comme 11 pourrait avoir un amt dévoué et aimant en mot. Malgré 
tout, 11 est sédutsant.” 

And yet they saw less of each other as the years went on, perhaps 
because Fantin became more of a hermit, while Whistler’s door opened 
wider. 

Journalists and critics hurried to Lindsey Row once they knew the 
door was open. Mr. Walter Greaves, who sometimes showed the 
studio, remembers doing the honours for Tom Taylor. Whistler 
told Mr. Sidney Starr that, while the M1ss Alexander was in the studio, 
Tom Taylor came : 

“‘'There were other visitors. Taylor said, ‘Ah, yes, um,’ then 
remarked that the upright line in the panelling of the wall was wrong, 
and the picture would be better without it, adding, ‘ Of course, it’s 
a matter of taste.’ To which Whistler replied, ‘ I thought that perhaps 
for once you were going to get away without having said anything 
1874] 131 


James McNeritit WuIsTLER 


foolish ; but remember, so that you may not make the mistake again, 
it’s not a matter of taste at all, it is a matter of knowledge. Good-bye.’ ” 
Journalists and critics filled columns with praise of forgotten master- 
pieces by unknown Academicians, but seldom spared space for the 
work in Whistler’s studio. Their gossip after the visit was about the 
man, not his pictures. 
Poets, the younger literary men, came in through the open door. 


Mr. Edmund Gosse, introduced by Mr. W. M. Rossetti, has described 


to us his impressions of the bare room with little in it but the easel, 
and of the small, alert, nervous man with keen eyes and beautiful 
hands who sat before it, looking at his canvas, never moving but looking 
steadily for twenty minutes or half an hour, perhaps, and then, of a 
sudden, dashing at it, giving it one touch, and saying, “‘ There, well, 
I think that will do for to-day ! ” an astonishing experience to one used 
to tapestried studios and painters more industrious with their hands 
than their brains. 

The fashionable world, royalty, crowded through the open door. 
Lindsey Row was lined with the carriages of Mayfair and Belgravia. 
Whistler was the fashion, if his pictures were not, and he could say 
nothing, he could do nothing, that did not go the rounds of drawing- 
rooms and dinner-tables. “Ha, ha! I have no private life!” he 
told a man who threatened him with exposure. And, from this time 
onward, he never had. 

He knew what his popularity meant. It was among the numbers 
who gathered about him because he was the fashion, that he could not 
afford to have friends. 

If the frequent use of the name “ Jimmie” by people in speak- 
ing and writing of him implies a friendliness on his part with every 
Tom, Dick, and Harry, nothing could be further from the fact. 
His friends, who were his contemporaries, called him “ Jimmie,” but 
rarely to his face, and the rest who did once had not the courage to 
a second time. We remember a foolish youth who, meeting him 
at our table, addressed him in free and easy fashion as “* Whistler.” 


He said nothing. He only looked, but the youth did not forget the 
Mr. after that. Whistler was the last man to allow familiarity or — 
to make friends. He understood how to keep at a distance those he 


did not know or did not want to know. 


132 [1874 


NOCTURNE 
BLUE AND GOLD, VALPARAISO BAY 


OIL 


In the Charles L, Freer Collection, National Gallery of American Art 
(See page 99) 


Ill 


NO. 


SYMPHONY IN WHITE. 


Tue Oren Door 


It was thought that he could not live without fighting, that to 
him “ battle was the spice of life.’ But he never fought until fighting 
was forced upon him. There were no fights, just as there was no 
mystery, at first. Every man was a friend until he proved himself 
an enemy. Whistler’s temper was violent. Few who ever saw him 
roused can forget the fire of his eyes, the fury of his face, the sting 
of his tongue. He was terrible then, and lost all control of himself. 
But there was always good cause for his rage, and once the storm had 
passed he laughed this, as all his other troubles, away and when the 
fighting began enjoyed it. He liked a fight, roared over it. Lord 
Redesdale told us Whistler would come to him in the morning at 
breakfast, or in the evening after dinner, to read the latest correspon- 
dence, discovering the dullness of the enemy. 

Whistler delighted in society, finding in it the change most men 
find in sport or travel. He hated anything that stopped his work. 
Hunting and fishing were an abomination. We never heard of his 
attempting to shoot, except once at the Leylands’, when, he said: 
“‘T rather fancied I shot part of a hare, for I thought I saw the fluff 
of its fur flying. I knew I hit a dog, for I saw the keeper taking out 
the shot!” His solicitor, Mr. William Webb, tried once to teach him 
to ride a bicycle. “Learn it? No,” he said to us. “ Why, I fell 
right off—but I fell in a rose-bush!” Motoring offended him and 
he abused J. for taking it up. But people amused him, and he enjoyed 
the “ parade of life.” This is the explanation of the dandyism that 
has shocked more than one of his critics. Whistler was never content 
with half-measures. He would not have played the social game at 
all had he not been able to play it well, and if taking infinite pains with 
his appearance means dandyism, then he wasa dandy. The very word 
pleased him, and he used it often, in American fashion, to express 
perfection or charm or beauty. Never was any man more particular 
about his person and his dress. He was as careful of his hair as a woman, 
though there was no need of the curling-tongs with which he has been 
reproached ; the difficulty was to restrain his curls and keep them in 
order. The white lock gave just the right touch. However fashion 
changed, he always wore the moustache and little imperial which 
other West Point men of his generation retained through life. Even 
his thick bushy eyebrows were trained, and they added to the humorous 
1874] 133 


James McNeritit WuIsTLER 


or sardonic expression of the deep blue eyes from which many shrank. 
His beautiful hands and nails were beautifully kept. In his dress 
was always something a little different from that of other men. His 
clothes were speckless, faultless, fitting irreproachably. He preferred 
pumps to boots, short sack-coats to tailed coats. His linen was of the 
finest, and a little Butterfly was embroidered on his handkerchief ; 
and his near-sightedness was a reason for the monocle of which he 
knew how to make such good use. He was long at his toilet, minute 
in every detail. Before entering a drawing-room we have seen him 
pause to adjust his curls and his cravat. So it was with everything. 
There was dandyism in his delicate handwriting, and the same care 
went to the arrangement of his cards of invitation and his letters; 
he would consider even the placing of his signature ona receipt. And 
he devoted no less attention to his breakfasts and dinners that made 
the talk of the town. He respected the art of cookery—the “ Family 
Bible ” he called the cook-book; he ate little, but that little had to 
be perfect both in cooking and serving. 

From the beginning at Lindsey Row he gave these breakfasts 
and dinners. Mr. Luke Jonides remembers calling one afternoon when 
“¢ Jimmy was busy putting things straight ; he asked me if I had any 
money. I told him I had twelve shillings. He said that was enough. 
We went out together, and he bought three chairs at two-and-sixpence 
each, and three bottles of claret at eighteenpence each, and three sticks 
of sealing-wax of different colours at twopence each. On our return 
he sealed the top of each bottle with a different coloured wax. He 
then told me he expected a possible buyer to dinner, and two other 
friends. When we had taken our seats at the table, he very solemnly 
told the maid to go down and bring up a bottle of wine, one of those 
with the red seal. The maid could hardly suppress a grin, but I alone 
saw it. Then, after the meat, he told her to fetch a bottle with the 
blue seal; and with dessert the one with the yellow seal was brought, 


and all were drunk in perfect innocence and delight. He sold his — 


picture, and said he was sure the sealing-wax had done it.” 
All his life he invented wines and was continually making “ finds.” 
We remember his discovery of a wonderful Crotite Mallard at the 


Café Royal, and an equally wonderful Pouilly supplied by his French 


barber, who had been one of Napoleon III.’s generals or Maximilian’s 
134 [1874 


Tue Open Door 


aides-de-camp. Another thing at the Café Royal besides the menu 
was the N on the wine-glasses, which were said to have come from 
the Tuileries in 1870, but, no matter how many have been broken, 
it is still there. Though he liked good wine, he drank as little as he 
ate. One of the innumerable stories often repeated may give a different 
idea. After a dinner in somebody’s new house he slipped on the stairs 
and fell. As he was helped up, he was asked if he had hurt himself. 
** No,” he said, ‘ but it’s all the fault of the damned teetotal architect.” 
Those who dined with him, or with whom he dined, knew that he 
was one of the most abstemious of men. On the other hand, it was 
astonishing how quickly some things went to his head. In later days 
when J. would stop with him at Frascati’s, on the way home from the 
studio, the talk grew gayer, the “Ha! Ha!” louder with the first 
sip of his absinthe. 

We have the story of his first dinner-party from Mr. Walter Greaves, 
whose workman was sent to Madame Venturi’s to borrow, and came 
back hung about with, pots and kettles and pans, and from Mrs. Ley- 
land, who lent her butler and at the last moment, with her sister, put up 
muslin curtains at the windows. Guests remember Whistler’s alarm 
when a near-sighted young lady in white mistook the Japanese bath, 
filled with water-lilies, for a divan, and tried to sit on the goldfish ; 
and Leyland’s disgust when Grisi’s daughter, whom he took in to 
dinner, would talk to him not of music, but of Ouida’s novels. Everyone 
found the menu “a little eccentric, but excellent.” The earliest menu 
we have seen is one, in Mr. Walter Dowdeswell’s possession, of a dinner 
in the eighties, as simple as it is characteristic of Whistler, and we give 
it: Potage Potiron ; Soles Frites; Baeuf ala Mode; Chapon au Cresson; 
Salade Laitue ; Marmalade de Pommes ; Omelette au Fromage. 

Mr. Alan S. Cole’s diary is the record of dinners in the seventies, 
of the company, and the talk: 

** November 16 (1875). Dined with Jimmy; Tissot, A. Moore, 
and Captain Crabb. Lovely blue and white china, and capital small 
dinner. General conversation and ideas on art unfettered by prin- 
ciples. Lovely Japanese lacquer. 

“* December 7 (1875). Dined with Jimmy; Cyril Flower, Tissot, 
Story. Talked Balzac—Pére Goriot—Cousine Bette—Cousin Pons— 
‘feune Homme de Province a4 Paris—Illusions perdues. 

1875] 135 


James McNeritt WuisTLeR 


“< Fanuary 6 (1876). With my father and mother to dine at 
Whistler’s. Mrs. Montiori, Mrs. Stansfield, and Gee there. My 
father on the innate desire or ambition of some men to be creators, 
either physical or mental. Whistler considered art had reached a 
climax with Japanese and Velasquez. He had to admit natural instinct 
and influence, and the ceaseless changing in all things. 

“© March 12 (1876). Dined with Jimmy. Miss Franklin there. 
Great conversation of Spiritualism, in which J. believes. We tried 
to get raps, but were unsuccessful, except in getting noises from sticky 
fingers on the table. 

“ March 25 (1876). Round to Whistler’s to dine. Mrs. Leyland 
and Mrs. Galsworthy and others. 

“* September 16 (1876). Dined with W. Eldon there. Hot discus- 
sion about Napoleon (Napoléon le petit, by Hugo). The Commune, with 
which J. sympathised [some fellow-feeling for Courbet, the reason 
perhaps]. Spiritualism. 

“* December 29 (1876). To dine with J.—the Doctor. Goldfish 
in bowl. Japanese trays—storks and birds. He read out two or three 
stories by Bret Harte: Luck of Roaring Camp, The Outcasts of Poker 
Flat, Tennessee’s Partner. Chatted as to doing illustration for a cata- 
logue for Mitford, and as to his Japanese woman, and a decorated room 
for the Museum. 7 

“ February 18 (1878). To Whistler’s. Mark Twain’s haunting 
jingle in the tramcar: ‘ Punch, brothers, punch with care; punch 
in the presence of the passenjaire ! ’ 

“ March 27 (1878). Dined with Whistler, young Mills and Lang, 
who writes. He seemed shocked by much that was said by Jimmy 
and Eldon.” 

Whistler delighted not only in Mark Twain’s, but in all jingles. 
He had an endless stock and recited them in the most unexpected places 
and at the most inappropriate moments. He went to the trouble 
to write down for us the lines of the Woodchuck : 


‘* How much wood would the woodchuck chuck 
If the woodchuck could chuck wood ? 
Why ! just as much as the woodchuck would 
If the woodchuck could chuck wood!” 
136 [1878 


THE Oren Door 


And as we read them in the familiar writing, we wonder why they never 
seemed foolish, but quite right, as he chanted them. In the Haden 
correspondence, published in The Gentle Art, a new version of Peter 
Piper may be found. He loved to quote the Danbury News man 
and the Detroit Free Press. He never lost his joy in American humour, 
and because there is something of the same spirit in Rossetti’s limericks 
he never tired of repeating them, especially the two beginning : 


“ There ts an old person named Scott 
Who thinks he can paint and cannot,” 
and 
“* There 1s an old painter called Sandys 
Who suffers from one of his glands.” 


| Whistler invented Sunday breakfasts. The day was unusual in 
London and also the hour—twelve instead of nine. “Nothing 
exactly like them has ever been in the world. They were as much 
himself as his work,” George Boughton wrote. Whistler arranged the 
table, seeing that everything placed on it was beautiful: the blue 
and white, the silver, the linen, the Japanese bowl of goldfish or the 
vase of flowers in the centre. If his resources failed, he borrowed 
from Lord Redesdale, or, after his brother was married, from Mrs. 
William Whistler, whose Japanese lacquer was his admiration. He 
prepared the menu, partly American, partly French, and wholly 
bewildering to joint-loving Britons. His description of the British 
breakfasts he was asked to were amazing: “ Beef, the people or the 
rats had been gnawing, beer, and cheese rinds, salad without dressing 
and tarts without taste. Quite British!” His buckwheat cakes are 
not forgotten. He would make them himself, if the party were informal, 
and he never spoke again to one man who ventured to dislike them. 
Sometimes eighteen or twenty sat down to breakfast, more often 
half that number. All were people Whistler wanted to meet, people 
who talked, people who painted, people who wrote, people who bought, 
people who were distinguished, people who were royal, people who 
were friends. From Mr. Cole we have notes of the company and 
talk at some of the breakfasts : 
“ Fune 17 (1877). To breakfast at J.’s. F. Dicey, young Potter, 
1877] 137 


James McNeitt WuisTLeR 


and Huth there. He showed some studies from figures—light and 
elegant—to be finished. 

“ Fune 29 (1879). To Whistler’s for breakfast. Much talk about 
Comédie-Francatse and Sarah Bernhardt. 

“ Fuly 8 (1883). Breakfast at W.’s. Lord Houghton, Oscar 
Wilde, Mrs. Singleton, Mrs. Moncrieff, Mrs. Gerald Potter, Lady 
Archie Campbell, the Storys, Theodore Watts, and some others. 
Mrs. Moncrieff sang well afterwards. Lord Houghton asked me 
about my father’s memoirs. Margie [Mrs. Cole] sat by him.” 

The breakfasts remain ‘‘ charming ” in Mrs. Moncrieff’s memory. 
And “charming” is Lady Colin Campbell’s word. Lady Wolseley 
writes us that she remembers “a flight of fans fastened up on the 
walls, and also that the table had a large flat blue china bowl, or dish, 
with goldfish and nasturtiums in it.” Mrs. Alan 8S. Cole recalls a 
single tall lily springing from the bowl; though invited for twelve, 
it was wiser, she adds, not to arrive much before two, for to get there 
earlier was often to hear Whistler splashing in his bath somewhere 
close to the drawing-room. This was Mr. W. J. Rawlinson’s ex- 
perience once. He had been asked for twelve, and got there a few 
minutes before as for breakfast in Paris. Several guests had come, 
others followed, a dozen perhaps; one was Lord Wolseley. For 
Whistler they waited—and they waited and they waited. At about 
half-past one they heard a splashing behind the folding-doors. There 
was a moment of indignation, Then Howell hurried in, beaming 
on them. “It’s all right, it’s all right!” he said, “ Jimmie won’t 
be long now; he is just having his bath!” Howell talked and they 
waited, and two struck before Whistler appeared, smiling, gracious, 
all in white, for it was hot, and they went down to breakfast. As soon 
as he came in he was so fascinating that the waiting was forgotten. 
We have heard but of one person who did not like the breakfasts, an 
' artist who went one morning, and his story was that he drove down to 
Chelsea from St. John’s Wood, and found Whistler alone, and they 
went into the dining room, and there was an egg on toast for Whistler 
and another egg on toast for himself, and that was all. Then Whistler 
wanted to show him pictures, but he was furious, and he said, ‘ No, 


Whistler, I have paid three shillings and sixpence for a cab to come here,. 


and I have eaten one egg, and I will look at no pictures ! ” 
138 [1883 


: 


Tue Open Door 


Sir Rennell Rodd writes us of the breakfasts at 13 Tite Street, 
“‘ with the inevitable buckwheat cakes, and green corn, and brilliant 
talk. One I remember particularly, for we happened to be thirteen. 
There were two Miss C.’s, the younger of whom died within a week 
of the breakfast ; and an elderly gentlemen, whose name I forget, who 
was there, when he heard of it at his club, said, ‘God bless my soul!’ 
had a stroke, and died too.” 

J. was once only at a Chelsea breakfast, in 1884, at Tite Street, 
when Mr. Menpes was present. But we often breakfasted in Paris 
at the Rue du Bac, and in London at the Fitzroy Street studio. It 
made no difference who was there, who sat beside you, Whistler domi- 
nated everybody and everything in his own as in every house he visited. 
Though short and small—a man of diminutive stature the usual 
description—his was the commanding presence. When he talked 
everyone listened. At his table he had a delightful way of waiting 
upon his guests. He would go round with a bottle of Burgundy 
in its cradle, talking all the while, emphasising every point with a 
dramatic pause just before or just after filling a glass. We remember 
one Sunday in Paris in 1893—Mr. and Mrs. Edwin A. Abbey and 
Dr. D. S. MacColl the other guests—when he told how he hung the 
pictures at the annual Liverpool exhibition in 1891 : 

“You know the Academy baby by the dozen had been sent in, 
and I got them all in my gallery; and in the centre, at one end, | . 
placed the birth of the baby—splendid; and opposite, the baby with 
the mustard-pot, and opposite that the baby with the puppy; and 
in the centre, on one side, the baby ill, doctor holding its pulse, mother 
weeping. On the other by the door, the baby dead, the baby’s funeral, 
baby from the cradle to the grave, baby in heaven, babies of all kinds 
and shapes all along the line ; not crowded, you know, hung with proper 
respect for the baby. And on varnishing day, in came the artists, 
each making for his own baby. Amazing! His baby on the line. 
Nothing could be better! And they all shook my hand, and thanked 
me, and went to look—at the other men’s babies. And then they 
saw babies in front of them, babies behind them, babies to right of 
them, babies to left of them. And then, you know, their faces fell ; 
they didn’t seem to like it—and—well—ha! ha !—they never asked 
me to hang the pictures again at Liverpool! What!” 

1884] 139 


James McNertt WuistLER 


As he told it he was on his feet, pouring out the Burgundy, 
minutes sometimes to fill a glass. There were minutes between 
one guest and the next; he seemed never to be in his chair; it was 
fully two hours before the story and breakfast came to an end together. 
But though no one else had a chance to talk, no one was bored. It 
was the same wherever he went if the people were sympathetic. If 
they were not, he could be as glum as anybody, especially if he was 
expected to “show off”; or, he could go fast asleep. In sympathetic 
houses he not only led the talk, he controlled it. There is a legend 
that he and Mark Twain met for the first time at a dinner, when they 
simultaneously asked their hostess who that noisy fellow was? For 
there was noise, there was gaiety, and everybody was carried away 
by it, even the servants. 

Whistler was an artist in his use of words and phrases, making 
them as much a part of his personality as the white lock and the eye- 
glass. His sudden ‘‘ What,” his familiar “‘ Well, you know,” his 
eloquent “H’m! h’m!” were placed as carefully as the Butterfly 
on his card of invitation, the blue and white on his table. No man 
was ever so eloquent with his hands, he could tell a whole story with 
his fingers, long, thin, sensitive—“ alive to the tips, like the fingers 
of a mesmerist,” Mr. Arthur Symons writes of them. No man ever 
put so much into words as he into the pause for the laugh, into the laugh 
itself, the loud, sharp “‘ Ha, ha!” and into the deliberate adjusting 
of his eye-glass. So much was in his manner that it is almost impossible 
' to give an idea of his talk to those who never heard it. We have listened 
to him with wonder and delight, and afterwards tried to repeat what 
he said, to find it fall flat and lifeless without the play of his expressive 
hands, without the malice or the music of his laugh. This is why 
the stories of him in print often make people marvel at the reputation 
they have brought him. Not that the talk was not good; it was. 
His wit was quick, spontaneous. “‘ Providence is very good to me 
sometimes,”’ was his answer when we asked him how he found the 
telling word. He has been compared to Degas, who, it is said, led 
up the talk to a witticism prepared beforehand; Whistler’s wit met 
like a flash the challenge he could not have anticipated. He loved a 
good story, made the most of it, treated it with a delicacy, a humour 
that was irresistible. He could be fantastic, malicious, audacious, 
140 [1893 


we on 


THe Orpen Door 


serious, everything but dull or gross. He shrank from grossness. No 
one, not his worst enemies, can recall a story from him with a touch 
or taint of it. The ugly, the unclean revolted him. 

We have heard of Sundays when Whistler sketched the people 
who were there, hanging the sketches in his drawing-room. One Sunday 
he made the dry-point of Lord (then Sir Garnet) Wolseley. Lord 
Wolseley himself has forgotten it: “I fear, beyond the recollection 
of an agreeable luncheon at his house at Chelsea, I have no reminis- 
cence,” he wrote to us. And Lady Wolseley thinks “ Lord Wolseley 
may have gone to him for sittings early, and have breakfasted with him. 
I have a vague impression.” But Howell was summoned that Sunday 
from Putney to amuse the sitter and prevent his hurrying off, and he 
put the date in his diary : 

*“* November 24 (1877). Went to Whistler’s, met Sir Garnet 
Wolseley. Whistler etched him; got two first proofs, second one 
touched, 42s. Met Pellegrini and Godwin.” | 

Whistler went everywhere, and knew everybody, though he did 
not allow everybody to know him. When somebody said to him, 
“The Prince of Wales says he knows you,”’ Whistler’s answer was, 
“‘That’s only his side.” He lived at a rate that would have killed 
most men, and at an expense in details that was fabulous. “I never 
dined alone for years,” he said. If no one was coming to him, if no 
one had invited him, he dined at a club. He was a familiar figure, 
at different periods, in the Arts, Chelsea, and Hogarth Clubs, the 
Arundel, the Beaufort Grill Club, or, for supper, at the Beefsteak 
Club. Many of his letters, for a period, were dated from ‘“ The 
Fielding.” He was once put up at the Savile, he told us, but heard no 
more about it ; and at the Savage, but that, he said, “ is a club to belong 
to, never to go to.” At the Reform, had he thought of it, he lost all 
chance of election one night when his laugh woke up the old gentleman 
whose snores were equally loud in the reading-room. An amusing proof 
of the number of his clubs is Mr. Alden Weir’s story of passing through 
London and being asked to dine by Whistler, who suggested first one 
club, then another, and drove him about to half a dozen or more, 
at each getting out of the cab alone and coming back to say nobody 
of any account was there, or the dinner was not good, or some 
other excuse; and, at last, with an apology, driving him home to 
1877] 141 


James McNertit WuHistTLER 


Chelsea, where a large party waited and an excellent dinner was served, 
and Mr. Weir was the one guest not in evening dress, for Whistler 
kept the party waiting still longer while he changed. In the 
Lindsey Row days Whistler sometimes dined in a cheap French 
restaurant, “ good of its kind,” with Albert Moore and Homer Martin, 
a man he delighted in. Many artists dined there, he said, and would 
sit and talk until late. ‘‘ But then, you know, the sort of Englishman 
who is entirely outside all these things, and likes to think he is ‘ in it,’ 
began to come too, and that ruined it.” 

To Pagani’s, in Great Portland Street, a tiny place then, he went 
with Pelligrini and others. He was often at the Café Royal in the 
eighties with Oscar Wilde; towards the end, Mr. Heinemann, Mr. 
E. G. Kennedy, and we were apt to be with him, when, if he ordered 
the dinner, Poulet en casserole was the principal dish, and sweet cham- 
pagne the wine. Never shall we forget a dinner there, in 1899, to 
Mr. Freer, who had just bought a picture. We and Mr. Heinemann 
were the other guests. Much as Whistler wished to be amiable to 
Mr. Freer, he was tired, and, somehow, the dinner was not right, and 
there were scenes in our corner behind the screen. Mr. Freer felt 
it necessary to entertain the party, which he did by talking pictures 
like a new critic, and Japanese prints like a cultured school-ma’am. 
Whistler slept loudly and we tried to be attentive, until at length, 
at some psychological moment in Hiroshige’s life or in Mr. Freer’s 

collection, Whistler snored such a tremendous snore that he woke 
~ himself up, crying: ‘‘ Good Heavens! Who is snoring ? ” 

Whistler had the faculty of being late when invited to dinner. 
One official evening, he arrived an hour after the time. ‘‘ We are so 
hungry, Mr. Whistler!” said his host. ‘‘ What a good sign!” was 
his answer. At times he felt “like a little devil,” and he told us of 
one of these occasions : 

“‘T arrived. In the middle of the drawing-room table was the new 
Fortnightly Review, wet from the press; in it an article on Méryon 
by Wedmore, and there was Wedmore—the distinguished guest. I 
felt the excitement over the great man, and the great things he had 
been doing. Wedmore took the hostess in to dinner; I was on her 
other side, seeing things, bent on making the most of them. And I 
talked of critics, of Wedmore, as though I did not know who sat opposite. 
142 [1879 


Tue Pracock Room 


And I was nudged, my foot kicked under the table. But I talked. 
And whenever the conversation turned on Méryon, or Wedmore’s 
article, or other serious things, I told another story, and I laughed— 
ha ha !—and they couldn’t help it, they all laughed with me, and Wed- 
more was forgotten, and I was the hero of the evening. And Wedmore 
has never forgiven me.” 

Whistler went a great deal to the theatre in the seventies and 
eighties, and was always at first nights. Occasionally he acted in 
amateur theatricals. In 1876 he played in Under the Umbrella, at 
the Albert Hall, and was elated by a paragraph on his performance 
in the Daily News. He showed himself at private views and at the 
ceremonies society approves. To see and to be seen was part of the 
social game, and the world, meeting him everywhere, mistook him 
for the Butterfly for which he seemed to pose. 


CHAPTER XYI: THE PEACOCK ROOM. THE YEARS 
EIGHTEEN SEVENTY-FOUR TO EIGHTEEN SEVENTY- 
SEVEN. 


For a year after the exhibition in Pall Mall, Whistler did not show any 
paintings. Artists said his pictures were not serious because not finished. 
Whistler retorted that theirs “ might be finished, but—well—they 
never had been begun.” Such remarks were not favoured by hanging 
committees. Probably Royal Academicians were honest, though 
malicious. Lord Redesdale remembered one whose work is forgotten, 
who used to say that Whistler was losing his eyesight, that he could not 
see there was no paint on his canvas. Mr. G. A. Holmes told us 
that a few artists in Chelsea, though they disliked him personally, 
thought him a man with new ideas who threw new light on art ; Henry 
Moore said to Mr. Holmes that Whistler put more atmosphere into 
his pictures than any man living. But Academicians, as a rule, were 
afraid of him and Whistler would tell Mr. Holmes: “* Well, you know, 
they want to treat me like a sheet of note-paper, and crumple me up! ” 

His prints were hung in exhibitions, many lent by Anderson Rose 
to the Liverpool Art Club in October 1874, and a few months afterwards 
to the Hartley Institution at Southampton. Shortly before the 
1874] 143 


James McNett WuIsTLER 


Liverpool show opened, Mr. Ralph Thomas issued the first catalogue 
of Whistler’s etchings: A Catalogue of the Etchings and Drypoints of 
James Abbott MacNeil Whistler, London, Privately Printed by Fobn 
Russell Smith, of 36 Soho Square. Of the fifty copies printed, only 
twenty-five were for sale, so that it became at once rare. Mr. Percy 
Thomas etched Whistler’s portrait of himself with his brushes as 
frontispiece. Mr. Ralph Thomas described the plates, and as he had 
been with Whistler when many were made and printed, he was far 
better qualified than any of his successors. It is much to be regretted 
that Wedmore did not follow Thomas’s excellent beginning. 

In 1875, Whistler exhibited pictures in the few galleries that 
would hang him. In October he sent to the Winter Exhibition at 
the Dudley Gallery a Nocturne in Blue and Gold, No. III., which is 
impossible to identify, and Nocturne in Black and Gold—The Falling 
Rocket, which Ruskin presently identified beyond possibility of doubt : 
the impression of fireworks in the gardens of Cremorne. But at the 
Dudley it created no sensation. F. G. Stephens, in the Atheneum, 
was almost alone in its praise. A month later, November 1875, 
Chelsea Reach—Harmony in Grey, and many studies of figures on 
brown paper were at the Winter Exhibition of the Society of 
French Artists, and three Nocturnes in the Spring Exhibition (1876) 
of the same Society. Thus Whistler managed without the Royal 
Academy. 

When Irving appeared as Philip II. in 1874, Whistler was struck 
with the tall, slim, romantic figure in silvery greys and blacks, and 
got him to pose. Mr. Bernhard Sickert thinks it extraordinary 
that Whistler failed to suggest Irving’s character. We think it more 
extraordinary for Mr. Sickert to forget that Whistler was painting 
Irving made up as Philip II. and not as Henry Irving. Mr. Cole 
saw the picture on May 5, 1876, and found Whistler “ quite madly 
enthusiastic about his power of painting such full-lengths in two 
sittings or so.” The reproduction in M. Duret’s Whistler differs in 
so many details from the picture to-day, that at first we wondered if 
two portraits were painted. M. Duret tells us that his reproduction 
is from a photograph lent him by George Lucas. Probably, M. 
Duret writes, the photograph was taken while Whistler was painting 
the picture, which afterwards he must have altered. On comparing 
144 [1876 


SEA BEACH WITH FIGURES 
SUC DY SE ORs Tria Si xe PROUPCIS \ 


PASTEL 
(See page 105) 


WHISTLER’S TABLE PALETTE 


*bsq ‘uewidey) porypy Jo uorssessod oy} uy 


110 


AWYYD AUNV MNId ; 
SHYNSId HHAHL AHL 


THe PrAcock Room 


the photograph carefully with the picture, we do not believe there were 
two portraits, but there were many changes. In the photograph the 
cloak is thrown back over the actor’s right shoulder, showing his arm. 
In the exhibited picture his arm is hidden by the cloak, and his hand, 
which before seems to have been thrust into his doublet, rests upon 
the collar of an order. The trunks, apparently, were much altered, 
especially the right, and the legs are far better drawn, the left foot 
entirely repainted. Though Whistler was acquiring more certainty 
in putting in these big portraits at once, he was becoming more exacting, 
and he made repeated changes. When the Irving was hung at the 
Grosvenor Gallery, Mrs. Stillman remembers that three different 
outlines of the figure were visible. The portrait was not a commission. 
It is said that Irving refused the small price Whistler asked for it, but 
later, seeing his legs sticking out from under a pile of canvasses in a 
Wardour Street shop, recognised them and bought the picture for 
ten guineas. Mr. Bram Stoker writes that, at the time of the bank- 
ruptcy, Whistler sold it to Irving “ for either twenty or forty pounds— 
I forget which.” The facts are that Whistler sold the Jrving to Howell, 
for “‘ ten pounds and a sealskin coat,” Howell recorded in his diary, 
and that from him it passed into the hands of Mr. Graves, the printseller 
in Pall Mall, who sold it to Irving for one hundred pounds. After 
Irving’s death, it came up for sale at Christie’s, and fetched five thou- 
sand pounds, becoming the property of Mr. Thomas, of Philadelphia. 
On the death of Mr. Thomas it was purchased for the Metropolitan 
Museum in New York. 

A portrait of Sir Henry Cole was begun this spring. Mr. Alan 
S. Cole, in his diary (May 19, 1876), speaks of “‘ a strong commencement 
upon a nearly life-size portrait of my father. Looking at it reflected 
in a glass, and how the figure stood within the frame.” This was never 
finished. Whistler’s executrix says it was burned. 

Lord Redesdale told us of a beautiful full-length of his wife in 
Chinese blue silk Whistler called fair, his word then for everything he 
liked. With two or three more sittings and a little work, it would have 
been finished. But it was a difficult moment, men were in possession 
at No. 2 Lindsey Row, and he slashed the canvas. The debt was 
small, thirty pounds or so, and the price agreed upon for the portrait 
was two hundred guineas. Lord Redesdale would gladly have settled 
1876] K 145 


James McNertit WHIsTLER 


the matter, but Whistler said nothing. A portrait started of Lord 
Redesdale, in Van Dyck costume, and several Nocturnes were torn off 
stretchers and slashed. The Fur ‘facket, Rosa Corder, Connie Gilchrist 
with the Skipping Rope—The Gold Girl, Effie Deans, were being painted. 
The Fur facket, Arrangement in Black and Brown his final name for 
it, is the portrait of Maud, Miss Franklin, who now becomes more 
important in his life and in his art. It is of great dignity. The dress 
is put in with a full, sweeping brush in long flowing lines, classic in the 
fall of the folds; the pale, beautiful face looks out like a flower from 
the depth of the background. In many portraits Whistler was rebuked 
for sacrificing the face to the design; here the interest is concentrated 
on the face, and that is why the shadowy figure has been criticised as 
a mere ghost, a mere rub-in of colour, on the canvas. That he carried 
the work as far as he thought it should be carried is certain when it 
is contrasted with Rosa Corder, also an Arrangement in Black and Brown, 
in which the jacket, the feathered hat in her hand, the trailing skirt, 
the face in severe profile, are more solidly modelled. M. Blanche 
has stated that Whistler, in Cheyne Walk, saw Miss Rosa Corder in 
her brown dress pass a door painted black, and was struck with the 
scheme of colour. This may be true, for, as we have shown, chance 
often suggested the effect or arrangement. Connie Guilchrist—The 
Gold Girl, a popular dancer at the Gaiety, attracted Whistler by her 
stage dress, which revealed her slight girlish form in its delicate youthful 
beauty. He posed her in the studio as he had seen her on the stage, 
skipping. But the movement which told on the stage by its simplicity, 
its spontaneity, became in the picture artificial. The figure has the 
elegance of the little pastels, it is placed with the distinction of the 
Miss Alexander, but the suspended action gives the sense of incom- 
pleteness. A long line swept down the back of-the figure proves he 
meant to change it. 

The above was written before the painting was bought by George 
A. Hearn and presented to the Metropolitan Museum of New York. 
Whistler for years had been endeavouring to get possession of it in order 
to destroy it. It had been seized at his bankruptcy, and for long was 
the property of Henry Labouchere. That Whistler was dissatisfied 
is shown by that long black line from the girl’s head to her heels. 
After it had hung for some time in the Metropolitan Museum the line 
146 [1876 


Tue Pracock Room 


was removed, and what is left of the picture Whistler wanted to destroy 
can now be seen on the walls. 

Always the pictures he was painting were in his mind. He memo- 
rised them as he did the Nocturnes, and over and over, instead of telling 
what he was painting, he would make, to show those he knew would 
understand, pen or wash sketches of the work he was engaged on, 
leaving the sketches, many of which exist, with his friends. There 
are records of the kind of most of these portraits. 

No portraits were shown in 1876, for other work engrossed him. 
It was the year of The Peacock Room. 

We do not know how he got the idea of the peacock as a motive 
for decoration, or where he obtained his knowledge of it. But the 
scheme was first proposed to Mr. W. C. Alexander for his house on 
Campden Hill, and Whistler put down a few notes in pen and ink. 
The work went no further, and he arranged, instead, a harmony in 
white for the drawing-room, replaced afterwards by Eastern tapestries. 
Then Leyland bought his house in Prince’s Gate. Leyland’s ambition 
was to live the life of an ancient Venetian merchant in modern London, 
and he began to remodel the interior and fill it with beautiful things. 
He bought the gilded staircase from Northumberland House, which 
was being pulled down. He commissioned Whistler to suggest the 
colour in the hall, and paint the detail of blossom and leaf on the panels 
of the dado. “ To Leyland’s house to see Whistler’s colouring of Hall— 
very delicate cocoa colour and gold—successful,” Mr. Cole wrote, 
March 24. Leyland covered the walls of drawing- and reception- 
rooms with pictures. He had work by Filippo Lippi, Botticelli, 
Crivelli. He owned Rossetti’s Blessed Damosel and Lady Lilith, 
Millais’ Eve of St. Agnes, Ford Madox Brown’s Chaucer at King Edward’s 
Court, Windus’ Burd Helen, Burne-Jones’ Mirror of Venus and Wine of 
Circe. He bought Legros, Watts, and Albert Moore. Whistler’s 
Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine was his, and he hung it in the dining- 
room amidst his splendid collection of blue and white china. 

Norman Shaw was making the alterations to the house, and another 
architect, Jeckyll, was suggested by Mr. Murray Marks to decorate 
the dining-room and arrange the blue and white. Some say that 
originally Morris and Burne-Jones were to do the dining-room, but 
that when Whistler stepped in they vanished. Jeckyll put up shelves 
1876] 147 


James McNeitt WHIsTLER 


to hold the china, and Whistler designed the sideboard. The Princesse 
was placed over the mantel, and space left at the opposite end of the 
room for another painting by Whistler, who wished the Three Figures, 
Pink and Grey to face the Princesse. ‘The walls were hung with Norwich 
leather. The shelves were divided by perpendicular lines endlessly 
repeated, and the panelled ceiling, with its pendant lamps, was heavy. 
Whistler maintained that the red border of the rug and the red flowers 
in the centre of each panel of the leather killed the delicate tones of 
his picture. Leyland agreed. The red border was cut off the rug, and 
Whistler gilded, or painted, the flowers on the leather with yellow and 
gold. The result was horrible ; the yellow paint and gilding “‘ swore ” 
at the yellow tone of the leather. Something else must be done, and 
again Leyland agreed. The something else developed into the scheme 
of decoration first submitted to Mr. Alexander: The Peacock Room. 

He told us one evening, when talking of it: ‘‘ Well, you know, I 
just painted as I went on, without design or sketch—it grew as I painted. 
And towards the end I reached such a point of perfection—putting 
in every touch with such freedom—that when I came round to the 
corner where I had started, why, I had to paint part of it over again, 
or the difference would have been too marked. And the harmony in 
blue and gold developing, you know, I forgot everything in my joy 
indi 

He had planned a journey to Venice, and new series of etchings 
there and in France and Holland. The journey was postponed. At 
the end of the season, the Leylands went to Speke Hall. Whistler 
remained at Prince’s Gate. Town emptied, he was still there, spending 
his days on ladders and scaffolding, or lying in a hammock painting. 
His two pupils helped him: ‘“ We laid on the gold,” Mr. Walter 
Greaves says, and there were times when the three were found with 
their hair and faces covered with it. Whistler’s description of this 
whirlwind of work was “ the show’s afire,”” an expression he used for 
years when things were going. He was up before six, at Prince’s 
Gate an hour or so after, at noon jumping into a hansom and driving 
home to lunch, then hurrying back to his work. At night he was fit for 
nothing but bed, “‘ so full were my eyes of sleep and peacock feathers,” 
he told us. He thought only of the beauty growing in his hands. 
Autumn came. Lionel Robinson and Sir Thomas Sutherland, with 
148 [1876 


NOCTURNE 
BLUE AND GREEN 


OIL 


In the National Gallery, London 


puryAoT “YY ‘ey “SIP JO $10jNIex | ayy Jo UOTSsessod ay} uT 
110 


MHATIS ANV ANTd / 
HANANLOON 


Tur Pracock Room 


whom he was to have gone to Venice, started without him. He could 
not drop the work at Prince’s Gate. 

A record of his progress is in the short notes of Mr. Cole’s 
diary : 

*¢ September 11 (1876). Whistler dined. Most entertaining with 
his brilliant description of his successful decorations at Leyland’s. 

“* September 20. To see Peacock Room. Peacock feather devices— 
blues and golds—extremely new and original. 

“ October 26. ‘To see room which is developing. The dado and 
panels greatly help it. Met Poynter, who spoke highly of Whistler’s 
decoration. 

“ October 27. Again to see room with Moody. He did not like 
the varnished surface and blocky manner of laying on the gold. 

“ October 29. ‘To Peacock Room. Mitford (Lord Redesdale) came. 

“* November 10. The blue over the brown (leather) background 
is most admirable in effect, and the ornament in gold on blue fine. 
W. quite mad with excitement. 

** November 20. With Prince Teck to see Whistler and the room. 
Left P. T. with Jimmy. 

“* November 29. Golden Peacocks promise to be superb. 

“* December 4. Peacocks superb. 

“« December 8. Article in Morning Post on Peacock Room. 

“* December 9. Whistler in a state over article in Morning Post. 
_ Leyland much perturbed as I heard. 

** December 15. Whistler now thinking of cutting off the pendant 
ceiling lamps in Peacock Room. 

“« December 17. My father and Probyn to see room. Jimmy much 
disgusted at my father’s telling him that, in taking so much pains over 
his work, and in the minuteness of his etched work, he really was like 
_ Mulready, who was equally scrupulous.” 

Lord Redesdale told us that, returning from Scotland, he went 
to Prince’s Gate. Whistler was on top of a ladder, looking like a little 
imp—a gnome. 

“‘ But what are you doing ? ” 

“‘T am doing the loveliest thing you ever saw!” 

“ But what of the beautiful old Spanish leather ? And Leyland? 
Have you consulted him ? ” 

1876] 149 


James McNeritt WHIsTLER 


“Why should I? I am doing the most beautiful thing that ever 
has been done, you know, the most beautiful room !” 

Everybody wanted to see it. Whistler held a succession of recep- 
tions at Prince’s Gate. He was flattered when the Princess Louise 
and the Marquis of Westminster came, he wrote to his mother at 
Hastings, for they set the fashion, kept up the talkin London. Boughton 
said in his Reminiscences: ‘‘ He often asked me round to The Peacock 
Room, and I see him still up on high, lying on his back often, working 
in ‘ gold on blue’ and ‘ blue on gold’ over the whole expanse of the 
ceiling, and, as far as I could see, he let no hand touch it but his own.” 
Mrs. Stillman, however, remembers the two pupils working while she 
drank tea with Whistler. Lady Ritchie let us have her impressions 
of a visit : 

“Long, long after the Paris days, Mr. Whistler danced when I 
would rather have talked. Some one, I cannot remember who, it was 
probably one of Mr. Cole’s family, told me one day when I was walking 
up Prince’s Gate that he was decorating a house by which we were 
passing, and asked me if I should like to goin. We found ourselves—it 
was like a dream—in a beautiful Peacock Room, full of lovely lights and 
tints, and romantic, dazzling effects. James Whistler, in a painter’s 
smock, stood at one end of the room at work. Seeing us, he laid 
down his brushes, and greeted us warmly, and I talked of old 
Paris days to him. ‘I used to ask you to dance,’ he said, ‘ but you 
liked talking best.’ To which I answered, ‘ No, indeed, I liked dancing 
best,’ and suddenly I found myself whirling half-way down the room.” 

Jeckyll came, and his visit was tragic. When he saw what had been 
done to his work, he hurried home, gilded his floor, and forgot his grief 
in a mad-house. 

Whistler received the critics on February 9, 1877. A leaflet, for 
distribution, was written, it is said, by Whistler, though the wording 
does not suggest it, and printed by Thomas Way. It explains that, 
with the Peacocks as motive, two patterns, derived from the eyes 
and the breast feathers, were invented and repeated throughout, 
sometimes one alone, sometimes both in combination ; along the dado, 
blue on gold, over the walls, gold on blue, while the arrangement was 
completed by the birds, painted in their splendour, in blue on the 
gold shutters, in gold on the blue space opposite the chimney-place. 
150 [1877 


THE PrEacock Room 


* Called and found Whistler elated with the praises of the Press of The 
Peacock Room,” is Mr. Cole’s note on the 18th of the month. Even 
then it was not finished. On March 5, Mr. Cole was “ late at Prince’s 
Gate with Whistler, consoling him. He trying to finish the peacocks 
on shutters. With him till 2 a.m., and walked home.” 

Whistler made no change in the architectural construction of the 
room, It was far from beautiful, with its perpendicular lines, its 
heavy ceiling, its hanging lamps, and its spaces so broken up that only 
on the wall opposite the Princesse and on the shutters could he carry out 
his design in its full splendour and stateliness, and give gorgeousness of 
form as well as colour ; only there could he paint the peacocks that were 
his motive, so that it is by artificial light, with the shutters closed, that 
the room is seen in completeness. He could do no more than adapt 
in marvellous fashion the eye of the peacock, the throat and breast 
feathers to the broken surfaces. But in spite of drawbacks, The Peacock 
Room is the “ noble work ” he called it to his mother, the one perfect 
mural decoration of modern times. It was his first chance, and it is 
a lasting reproach to his contemporaries that there was no one to offer 
him another until too late. 

Whistler, who in his pictures avoided literary themes, resorted 
to symbolism in his gold peacocks on the wall facing the Princesse. One, 
standing amid flying feathers and gold, clutches in his claws a pile of 
coins ; the other spreads his wings in angry but triumphant defiance: 
“ the Rich Peacock and the Poor Peacock,”’ Whistler said, symbolising 
the relations between patron and artist. 

Leyland had been away from Prince’s Gate for months. He had 
seen his beautiful leather disappear beneath Whistler’s blue and gold. 
He had heard of receptions and press views to which no invitations 
had been issued by him or to him, and he was annoyed at having his 
private house turned into a public gallery. The crisis came when 
Whistler, thinking himself justified by months of work, asked two 
thousand guineas for the decoration of the room. Leyland, who had 
sanctioned only the retouching of the leather, could restrain himself 
no longer. Like many generous men, he had a strict, if narrow, sense 
of justice. The original understanding was that Whistler should receive 
five hundred guineas. This grew to a thousand as the scheme developed. 
But when, at the end, Whistler demanded two thousand, and there 
1877 | I51 


James McNertt WHIsTLER 


was no contract, Leyland sent Whistler one thousand pounds, not even 
guineas. To Whistler this was an insult. He felt he had been treated 
not as an artist, but as a tradesman. He never forgave Leyland, though, 
at one moment, Leyland was prepared to pay the whole sum if Whistler 
would leave the house. Whistler refused, preferring to make Leyland 
a gift of the decoration than not finish the panel of the Peacocks, and 
he told Mr. Cole: 

“You know, there Leyland will sit at dinner, his back to the 
Princesse, and always before him the apotheosis of Part et Pargent /” 

And this was what happened. Leyland knew that, in return for the 
loss of his leather and his irritation with Whistler, he had been given 
something beautiful, and he kept the dining-room as Whistler left it, 
toning down not a flying feather, not a piece of gold in that triumphant 
caricature. Until the colour fades from the panel, the world cannot 
forget the quarrel. Whistler never forgot it, and his resentment 
against Leyland never lessened. It may be that he was over-sensitive, 
certainly he put himself in the wrong by his conduct to Leyland. But 
he could no more help his manner of avenging what he thought an 
insult, than the meek man can refrain from turning the other cheek 
to the chastiser. It will ever be to Leyland’s credit that he left the 
work alone. 

A few years ago the room was removed from the house in Prince’s 
Gate, bought by Messrs. Brown and Phillips, sold by them to Messrs. 
Obach, who exhibited it in their Bond Street gallery, and it was then 
purchased by Mr. Charles L. Freer and taken to Detroit. As he 
owns the Princesse, The Peacock Room is probably once again just as 
it was when Whistler finished it. 


CHAPTER XVII: THE GROSVENOR GALLERY. THE YEARS 
EIGHTEEN SEVENTY-SEVEN AND EIGHTEEN SEVENTY- 
EIGHT. 


Many exhibitions had been organised in opposition to the Royal 
Academy, but on too small a scale to contend against that rich and 
powerful institution. Sir Coutts Lindsay, the founder of the Grosvenor 
Gallery, brought to it money, a talent for organisation, and a deter- 
152 — LBOF 


THE GROSVENOR GALLERY 


mination to show the best work in the right way. Nothing could 
have been more in accord with Whistler’s ideas. He dropped in to 
smoke with Mr. Cole on the evening of March 19, 1876, “in great 
excitement over Sir Coutts Lindsay’s gallery for pictures—very select 
exhibition, which he carried to an extreme by saying that it might be 
opened with only one picture worthy of being shown that season.” 
Sir Coutts Lindsay proposed to exhibit no pictures save those he invited, 
and he might have succeeded had he ignored the Academy, and made 
the Grosvenor as distinct from it as the International Society of Sculp- 
tors, Painters and Gravers was under Whistler’s presidency. He had the 
daring to invite Whistler, Rossetti, Burne-Jones, Holman Hunt, Walter 
Crane, Watts; but the weakness to include Millais, Alma-Tadema, 
Poynter, Richmond, Leighton. ‘‘ To those whose work he wanted, he 
gave little dinners,” Mr. Hallé has told us, and a very strange lot some 
of them seemed to Sir Coutts probably, to his butler certainly. One 
evening the butler could endure it no longer, and he came into the 
drawing-room and whispered: ‘‘ There’s a gent downstairs says ’e ’as 
_ come to dinner, wot’s forgot ’is necktie and stuck a fevver in his ’air,”’ 
for at this period Whistler, Mr. Hallé says, never wore a necktie when 
in evening dress. The white lock bewildered others. Mrs. Leyland 
remembered his going to her box at the opera once, where the 
attendant leaned over and said: “ Beg your pardon, sir, but there’s 
a white feather in your hair, just on top!” 

At first, Burne-Jones and the followers of the Pre-Raphaelites were 
most in evidence at Sir Coutts Lindsay’s exhibitions, and the “‘ greenery- 
yallery, Grosvenor Gallery” element prevailed. But the Grosvenor, 
by the time its traditions were taken over by the New Gallery, was little 
more than an overflow from the Academy. 

Shortly before the first exhibition in 1877, Whistler’s brother, 
the doctor, was married to Miss Helen Ionides, a cousin of Aleco 
and Luke Ionides. The wedding (April 17, 1877) was at St. George’s, 
Hanover Square, and the Greek Church, London Wall. It brought 
to Whistler a good friend for the troubled years that were to come, 
and Mrs. Whistler’s house in Wimpole Street was for long a home to 
him. 

The first Grosvenor was a loan exhibition, and opened in May 1877. 
Whistler sent Nocturne in Black and Gold—The Falling Rocket shown 
1877] 153 


James McNeritt WuIsTLER 


at the Dudley ; Harmony in Amber and Black, the first title of The 
Fur Facket ; Arrangement in Brown; Irving as Philip II. of Spain, 
with the title Arrangement in Black, No. III. From Mrs. Leyland 
came Nocturne in Blue and Silver; from Mr. W. Graham another 
Nocturne in Blue and Silver—changed later by Whistler to Blue and 
Gold, Old Battersea Bridge, now at the Tate Gallery; from the Hon. 
Mrs. Percy Wyndham, Nocturne in Blue and Gold, at Westminster. The 
Carlyle was included, but it arrived too late to be catalogued. Boehm 
lent his bust of Whistler in terra-cotta, done in 1872, considered at the 
time a good portrait. 

Whistler’s work was also seen in a frieze, described by Mr. Walter 
Crane: “‘ Whistler designed the frieze—the phases of the moon on the 
coved ceiling of the West Gallery which has disappeared since its 
conversion into the Holian Hall, with stars on a subdued blue ground, 
the moon and stars being brought out in silver, the frieze being divided 
into panels by the supports of the glass roof. The ‘ phases’ were 
sufficiently separated from each other.” 

We have heard of this decoration from no one else. Probably 
it was overshadowed by the crimson silk damask and green velvet hang- 
ings, the gilded pilasters and furniture, the monumental chimneypiece, 
of which complaints were heard from every side. The sumptuous- 
ness of the background was disastrous to the pictures. Whistler’s 
suffered less than others, but were not liked the more on that account. 
Before the private view (April 30, 1877), Sir Coutts Lindsay had 
expressed his disappointment in the /rving and the Nocturnes. At the 
private view the crowd gathered in front of Alma-Tadema, Burne- 
Jones, Millais, Leighton, Poynter, Richmond. The critics sneered 
at Whistler, or patronised him. The Atheneum grudged meagre 
lines to this ‘‘ whimsical, if capable, artist and his vagaries.” The 
Times smiled with condescension at “‘ Mr. Whistler’s compartment, 
musical with strange Nocturnes,” wondered how Irving enjoyed 
‘“‘ being reduced to a mere arrangement,” and deplored the theory 
that, in practice, covered ‘‘ an entire absence of details, even details 
generally considered so important to a full-length portrait as arms and 
legs. In fact, Mr. Whistler’s full-length arrangements suggest to us a 
choice between materialised spirits and figures in a London fog.” 

But no criticism was so insolent as the notice of the Grosvenor which 
154 [1877 


Tue GrosvENoR GALLERY 


Ruskin delivered from his circulating pulpit, Fors Clavigera (July 2, 
1877). 

Ruskin, though social subjects engrossed him, was still the art critic 
powerful to the public, to himself infallible. He had made the 
Pre-Raphaelites, he set to work to unmake Whistler. Already he was 
attacked by the mental malady, the “ morbid excitement ” in Mr. 
Collingwood’s words, that obscured the last years of his life; he had 
been very ill in the winter of 1877. Nothing else could pardon his 
malice and insolence. He reserved his chief abuse for Whistler’s 
Falling Rocket at Cremorne, with the sudden burst of fire and shower 
of gold and detail disappearing in the illimitable darkness of night. 
That fireworks in a place of entertainment could have in them the 
elements of beauty was a truth Ruskin could not grasp, and with 
this wonderful canvas before him, he remained blind to the splendour 
of the subject and the mastery of the painter: “I have seen and 
heard much of cockney impudence before now, but never expected 
to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of 
paint in the public’s face.” 

Boughton, in his Reminiscences, tells that Whistler first chanced 
upon this criticism when they were alone together in the smoking-room 
of the Arts Club. “ It is the most debased style of criticism I have had 
thrown at me yet,” Whistler said. “ Sounds rather like libel,” Bough- 
ton suggested. ‘‘ Well—that I shall try to find out!” Whistler 
replied. 

Till now, his answer to abuse of his work had been the lash of his wit. 
But if critics had tried him by their stupidity, never, before Ruskin, 
had they outraged him by their venom. The insult appeared in a 
widely read print; he sought redress in the most public fashion possible 
in England, and sued Ruskin for libel. 

The immediate result was that he found it harder to sell his pictures. 
To buy his Nocturnes was to be ridiculed, Mr. Rawlinson, one of the 
few who risked it, assures us. Whistler laughed away the new anxiety, 
and devoted more time to black-and-white. He had hoped to go to 
Venice, but the preparations for the trial kept him in London. And 
now Howell made himself as useful to Whistler as he had been to 
Rossetti : 

“Well, you know, it happened one summer evening, in those old 
1877] 155 


James McNeritt WHIsTLER 


days when there was real summer, I was sitting looking out of the 
window in Lindsey Row, and there was Howell passing, and Rosa Corder 
was with him. And I called to them and they came in, and Howell 
said; ‘Why, you have etched many plates, haven’t you? You must 
get them out, you must print them, you must let me see to them— 
there’s gold waiting. And you have a press!’ And so I had, in a 
room upstairs, only it was rusty, it hadn’t been used for solong. But 
Howell wouldn’t listen to an objection. He said he would fix up the 
press, he would pull it. And there was no escape. And the next 
morning, there we all were, Rosa Corder, too, and Howell was pulling 
at the wheel, and there were basins of water, and paper being damped, 
and prints being dried, and then Howell was gririding more ink, and, 
with the plates under my fingers, I felt all the old love of it come back. 
In the afternoon Howell would go and see Graves, the printseller, 
and there were orders flying about, and cheques—it was all amazing, 
you know! Howell profited, of course. But he was so superb. One 
evening we had left a pile of eleven prints just pulled, and the next 
morning only five were there. ‘It’s very strange,’ Howell said, ‘ we 
must have a search. No one could have taken them but me, and that, 
you know, is impossible!’ ” There is a record of this period in the 
etching, Lady at a Window, with Rosa Corder, or Maud, by the garret 
window, looking at a print, the press behind her. 

It was a period of what he called his “‘ fiendish slavery to the press.” 
There were new plates. In 1878 St. Fames’s Street was reproduced by 
lithography in the “ Season Number ” of Vanity Fair. The Atheneum 
objected to it because it was “* not done as Leech or Hogarth would have 
done it.” The World mistook the reproduction for the original, and 
so invited from Whistler one of the letters following each other fast : 
“‘ Atlas has the wisdom of ages, and need not grieve himself with mere 
matters of art.” Adam and Eve—Old Chelsea has a special interest, 
for it marks the transition from his early manner in the Thames Set 
to the later handling in the Venetian. A plate was made from the Irving 
as Philip of Spain, the only portrait Whistler reproduced on copper, 
and it was not a success. His plates of Jo and Maud were never from 
pictures, though often studies for pictures he proposed to paint. The 
dry-point of his Mother has no relation to the portrait. He was 
bored to death with copying himself, he would say, and, twenty years 
156 [1878 


THE GROSVENOR GALLERY 


afterwards, when he undertook a lithograph of his Montesquiou and 
failed, he said that “‘ it was impossible to produce the same masterpiece 
twice over,” that ‘the inspiration would not come,” that when he 
was not working at a new thing from Nature he was not applying him- 
self, “‘it was as difficult as for a hen to lay the same egg twice.” 

In 1878 he made his first experiments in lithography. His attention 
had been called to it by Mr. Thomas Way, who did more than any other 
man to revive the artin England. Lithography, appropriated by com- 
merce, was almost forgotten as a means of artistic expression. In France, 
it was given over for cheaper and quicker methods of illustration ; in 
England it was overweighted by the ponderous performances of Haghe 
and Nash, hedged about by trade unions, and reduced to the perfection 
of commonplace. Lithographers here and there preserved its best 
traditions and regretted the degradation. Mr. Thomas Way deter- 
mined to interest artists again in a medium that had yielded such 
splendid results. He prepared stones for them, explained processes, 
and would not hear of difficulties. Some artists experimented, but 
lithography did not pay while the anecdote in paint fetched a fortune. 
Mr. Way appealed to Whistler, who tried the stone, grasped its possi- 
bilities, and was delighted. In his first five lithographs he did things 
never attempted before and found the medium adapted to him. He 
made nine this year on the stone, though his later work was mostly 
done on lithographic paper. He proposed to publish this first series 
as Art Notes, but there was no demand, and the plan fell through. 
The Toilet and the Broad Bridge were printed in Piccadilly (1878), edited 
by Mr. Watts-Dunton, and they had hardly appeared when the maga- 
zine came to an end. Neither Whistler nor lithography then meant 
success for any enterprise. 

In 1878, the Catalogue of Blue and White Nankin Porcelain Forming 
the Collection of Sir Henry Thompson was published. Mr. Murray 
Marks and Mr. W. C. Alexander own delicate little designs of blue and 
white by Whistler for Mr. Marks, but never used. They were a good 
preparation for the drawings which, in collaboration with Sir Henry 
Thompson, he made to illustrate the Catalogue. Some are in brown, 
some in blue, reproduced by the Autotype Company. Nineteen of the 
twenty-six are by Whistler, simple and direct, the modelling in the 
drawing by the brush as the Japanese would have given it. As a rule 
1878] 157 


James McNeitt WuIsTLER 


there are neither shadows nor attempts at relief. The series is a refuta- 
tion of the assertion that he could not draw. Whenever he attempted 
drawing of this sort, or etchings like The Wine Glass, he eclipsed Jacque- 
mart and all his contemporaries. Worried, anxious, the libel case 
hanging over him, his debts increasing, the general distrust in his work 
growing, Whistler, nevertheless, gave to the catalogue his usual care. 
We have seen another set of the drawings, which differ slightly from 
those reproduced, and with which, evidently, he was not satisfied. The 
book was edited by Mr. Murray Marks, and issued by Messrs. Ellis and 
White, of 29 New Bond Street, in May, and Mr. Marks exhibited the 
drawings and the porcelain, with the book, in his shop, 395 Oxford 
Street. The show was not a success, the book was a loss, though 
only two hundred and twenty copies were printed. Now it is almost 
impossible to get. / 

Of personal notice, Whistler had more than enough. He was 
caricatured this year in The Grasshopper at the Gaiety—it was in the 
days of Edward Terry and Nellie Farren. A large full-length, thought 
by many more a portrait than a caricature, was painted by Carlo 
Pellegrini, an Italian artist who lived in England and, under the names 
of “ Singe ” and “ Ape,” contributed to Vanity Fair caricatures which, 
unlike the characterless, artless scrawls of his more popular amateur 
successors, were works of art and, therefore, appreciated by Whistler. 
The painting shows Whistler in evening dress, no necktie, and a gold 
chain to his monocle; and in a scene parodying the studios and artists 
of the day, it was pushed in on an easel, some say by Pellegrini, with 
the announcement, ‘‘ Here is the inventor of black-and-white!” It 
was a failure, and no wonder. It was impossible to see the point. The 
painting now belongs to Mr. John W. Simpson of New York. Whistler 
was also caricatured in Vanity Fair by “Spy,” Leslie Ward, then 
rapidly rivalling “ Ape” in popularity, and to be so caricatured was, 
in London, to achieve notoriety. 

To the second Grosvenor in 1878 he sent, in defiance to Ruskin, 
another series of Nocturnes, Harmonies, and Arrangements. Among 
them was the Arrangement in White and Black, No. I., the large, full- 
length portrait of Miss Maud Franklin, that sometimes figures in 
catalogues and articles as L’ Américaine. We believe it was never shown 
in England again. It passed in the early eighties into the collection 
158 , [1878 


Tue Wuite Houses 


of Dr. Linde, at Liibeck, where it remained until 1904, was then sold 
through Paris dealers to an American, and remains one of the least 
known of Whistler’s large full-lengths. We saw it in the spring of 
1904 at M. Duret’s apartment in the Rue Vignon. It is the only 
portrait, except the Connie Gilchrist and The Yellow Buskin, in 
which Whistler attempted to give movement to the figure. Miss 
Franklin wears a white gown in the ugly fashion of the late seventies, 
and walks forward, one hand on her hip, the other holding up her 
skirt. But she fails to fulfil Whistler’s precept that the figure 
must keep within the frame. She seems walking out of the depths 
of the background, breaking through the envelope of atmosphere. 
The problem was difficult, an unusual one for Whistler, and, interesting 
as is the result, the portrait hardly ranks with the greatest. When 
shown in 1878, it did not help to reconcile the critics. The Atheneum 
said: “ Mr. Whistler is in great force. Last year some of his life-size 
portraits were without feet; here we have a curiously shaped young 
lady, ostentatiously showing her foot, which is a pretty large one.” 
It was a “‘ vaporous full-length ” in the opinion of the Zimes, babbling 
nonsense about the Nocturnes and glad to turn from Whistler’s “ diet 
of fog to the broad table of substantial landscape spread for us by Cecil 
G. Lawson.” Whistler contributed a drawing of the Arrangement in 
W hite and Black to Blackburn’s Grosvenor Notes, an illustrated catalogue 
published for the first time in 1878. For many years Whistler made 
these little sketches in pen and ink after his pictures for illustrated 
catalogues, and for papers that illustrated notices of the exhibitions, 
an aid to the identification of works where the titles fail. 


CHAPTER XVIII: THE WHITE HOUSE. THE YEAR EIGH- 
TEEN SEVENTY-EIGHT. 


In the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1878, Whistler’s only exhibit was 
the section of a room that may have been his design for Mr. Alexander, 
or more likely was his decoration for the White House which E. W. 
Godwin, the architect, was building for him in Tite Street, Chelsea. 
He called it a Harmony in Yellow and Gold, and others spoke of it as 
the Primrose Room. It seems to have been simply a room painted in 
1878 | 159 


James McNe1tt WuIsTLER 


gold and yellow, the peacock pattern again used, but this time in gold 
on yellow and yellow on gold. There was simple furniture in yellow 
of a darker tone than the walls, also a chimneypiece which, twelve 
years or so afterwards, was found by Mr. Pickford Waller in a second- 
hand furniture shop and bought. The stove was taken out ; two panels, 
with a pattern suggested for the dado, were turned into doors, and 
the chimneypiece is now a cabinet with Whistler’s decorations almost 
untouched. 

A few years ago Messrs. Obach had in their possession a set of glass 
panels for a door from the house of Anderson Rose, stated to be by 
Whistler, but there is no evidence of Whistler’s work in them. Recently 
a set of Empire chairs were shown in New York said to have been deco- 
rated by Whistler for Wickham Flower, and so described at Christie’s 
where they were sold, but Messrs. Christie do not guarantee the articles 
in their sales. ‘To those who know Whistler’s work there was no trace 
of it in the chairs, and we have it on Mrs. Flower’s authority that the 
decorations were by Henry Treffy Dunn. 

Mr. Sheridan Ford, in the suppressed edition of The Gentle Art, 
writes that, at Sir Thomas Sutherland’s request, Whistler designed a 
scheme of decoration for his house, but that its “startling novelty 
caused such evident anxiety,” Whistler carried it no further. Some 
houses he did decorate later on—those of Mrs. William Whistler, Mr. 
William Heinemann, Senor Sarasate, Mrs. Walter Sickert, Mrs. D’Oyly 
Carte, Mr. Menpes. But the decoration was simply the colour- 
scheme. Whistler mixed the colour, which was usually put on by 
house-painters. He frequently suggested the furniture, but of design, 
as in The Peacock Room, there was nothing, not even in any of his 
own houses after the White House. To one friend, thinking of decorat- 
ing, who asked his advice, his answer was, “‘ Well, first burn all your 
furniture.” Often he gave elaborate directions as to what colours 
should be used and how they were to be applied. Mrs. D’Oyly Carte 
wrote us: ! 

“It would not be quite correct to say that Mr. Whistler designed 
the decorations of my house, because it is one of the old Adam houses 
in Adelphi Terrace, and it contained the original Adam ceiling in the 
drawing-room and a number of the old Adam mantelpieces, which 
Mr. Whistler much admired, as he did also some of the cornices, doors — 
160 [1878 


THE MOTHER 
ARRANGEMENT IN GREY AND BLACK 


OIL 


In the Musée du Luxembourg 


(See page 118) 


PORTRAIT OF THOMAS CARLYLE 
ARRANGEMENT IN GREY AND BLACK. NO. II 


OIL 


In the Corporation Art Gallery, Glasgow 
(See page 119) 


Tue Wuite House 


and other things. What he did do was to design a colour-scheme for 
the house, and he mixed the colours for distempering the walls in each 
case, leaving only the painters to apply them. In this way he got the 
exact shade he wanted, which made all the difference, as I think the 
difficulty in getting any painting satisfactorily done is that painters 
simply have their stock shades which they show you to choose from, 
and none of them seem to be the kind of shades that Mr. Whistler 
managed to achieve by the mixing of his ingredients. He distempered 
the whole of the staircase light pink; the dining-room a different and 
deeper shade; the library he made one of those yellows he had in his 
drawing-room at the Vale, a sort of primrose which seemed as if the sun 
was shining, however dark the day, and he painted the woodwork with 
it green, but not like the ordinary painters’ green at all. He followed 
the same scheme in the other rooms. His idea was to make the house 
gay and delicate in colour.” 

When he left No. 2 Lindsey Row he suggested the colour arrange- 
ment throughout the house for the new tenants, Mr. and Mrs. Sydney 
Morse, got his man Cossens to do the distempering, and, Mrs. Morse 
writes us, ‘‘ was so afraid that we should do it wrongly that he personally 
superintended the work and mixed the colour himself, though in con- 
sequence of this a whole wash for the dining-room was spoilt, as 
he forgot to stir it up at the right moment. There was great discussion 
about gold size.” 

To decoration Whistler applied his scientific method of painting, 
and on his walls, as in his pictures, black was often the basis. Colour . 
for him was as much decoration as pattern was for William Morris, and 
in the use of flat colour for wall decoration Whistler has triumphed. 
His theory of interior decoration, though people do not realise it, has 
been universally adopted, even his use of distemper, in which he was 
only carrying on the beautiful tradition of whitewashing walls. Not 
only can this simple scheme be made more appropriate as a background 
than Morris’ hangings and stencillings, but it has the virtue of utility 
and cheapness, which Morris for ever preached but never practised. In 
the painting of pictures, the idea of the Pre-Raphaelites was decoration 
—that is, convention. Their decoration was either wilfully or ignorantly 
founded on the realism of the Middle Ages. The great decorators 
of Italy were the realists of their day, their realism, except in the case 
1878] L 161 


James McNertt WuisTLER 


of the greatest, Piero della Francesca, is now regarded as convention, 
and it is the Pre-Raphaelites who stirred up these dead bones. In 
France, Puvis de Chavannes developed Italian methods, adapting them 
to modern subjects and modern wants, retaining the convention of 
flatness and simplicity. Whistler believed that a portrait or a Nocturne 
should be as decorative as a conventional design ; that, by the arrange- 
ment of his subjects, and by their colour, they should be made decora- 
tive, and not by conventional setting and conventional lines. He also 
believed that walls should be in flat tones and not covered with pattern. 
Pictures then’ placed upon them were shown properly and did not 
struggle with the pattern. Lady Archibald Campbell writes us a few 
lines proving that he could make people understand his aims when they 
were willing to learn from him : 

“ The fundamental principles of decorative art with which Whistler 
impressed me, related to the necessity of applying scientific methods 
to the treatment of all decorative work; that to produce harmonious 
effects in line and colour grouping, the whole plan or scheme should 
have to be thoroughly thought out so as to be finished before it was 
practically begun. I think he proved his saying to be true, that the 
fundamental principles of decorative art, as in all art, are based on 
laws as exact as those of the known sciences. He concluded that what 
the knowledge of a fundamental base has done for music, a similarly 
demonstrative method must do for painting. The musical vocabulary 
which he used to distinguish his creations always struck me as singularly 
appropriate, though he had no knowledge of music.” 

Before the Ruskin case came into court, the idea of opening an 
atelier for students occurred to Whistler, and it was because the painting 
room at No. 2 Lindsey Row was too small that he asked Godwin to 
build the house, ever since known as the White House, in Tite Street. 
Up to this time he had never had a studio in Chelsea. His pictures 
had been painted in rooms without a top-light, partly, no doubt, that he 
might paint his sitters under natural conditions. Even in his later 
studios of the Rue Notre-Dame des Champs in Paris, and Fitzroy 
Street in London, shades and screens were drawn so that the light 
might come in as from an ordinary window. He was trying to put 
the figure into the atmosphere that surrounded it, not to cut it 
out of this atmosphere. But he needed more space for the atelier, 
162 [1878 


Tue Wuitt House 


which promised success. Among artists, there were always a few 
who believed in Whistler. Duranty only expressed the prevailing 
feeling when, in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts (1878), he referred to 
Whistler’s influence on British painters represented in the Universal 
Exhibition. 

The White House, low, three-storeyed, simple in ornament, is modest 
compared to many houses in Tite Street. It has been much changed, 
but the general plan survives. When it was built, it shared the fate, 
of everything associated with Whistler. The white brick of the walls, 
the green slate of the roof, the stone facings, the blue door and wood- 
work were as “eccentric ”’ and “ fantastic’ as Whistler himself to 
art-critical journalists. To architectural papers they were the cause 
of debate and calling of names. To the Metropolitan Board of Works 
the simplicity of design was suspiciously plain, and mouldings in speci- 
fied places were insisted upon in return for the licence to build. Dis- 
cussion followed discussion, because the studio was the most important 
feature of the interior and placed at the top of the house, because win- 
dows and doors were made where they were wanted “and not with 
Baker Street regularity,” because Godwin and Whistler liked the lovely 
effect of the green tiles with the white walls. Harry Quilter, who 
bought the house in 1879 and altered it, probably ruined the colour- 
scheme which Whistler had arranged, and the interior decoration, if it 
was ever carried out, does not now exist. 

Whistler’s tenancy of the Lindsey Row house came to an end on 
June 25 (1878), but he could not leave it in time for the new tenants. 
He did not get out of the studio until October. It was surprising that 
he moved at all. The moment was one of debts and difficulties. He 
was alone. His mother was ill at Hastings, he had just broken his 
engagement with Leyland’s sister-in-law,* and he had quarrelled with 
Leyland. The criticism of the last few years told severely upon the 
sale of his pictures—upon himself. Howell, who had “ started cheques 
and orders flying about ” and attended to business details, kept a diary 
during part of 1877 and all of 1878. To look through it is to share 
Whistler’s indignation that so great an artist should be reduced to such 
shifts. In Kensington and St. John’s Wood palaces, Academicians 
could not turn pictures out fast enough for the competing crowd ; 

* Mrs. Leyland told us of this engagement. We know nothing more about it. 


1878] 163 


James McNeritt WuisTLEeR 


Whistler was often compelled to borrow a few shillings. There are 
legends of his taking a hansom and driving to find somebody to lend 
him half a crown to pay for it, and before he had found anybody and 
could get rid of the cab the fare had mounted to half a guinea. Howell’s 
diary shows that he had to raise money before he could lend it to 
Whistler. Sometimes larger sums than he could manage were arranged 
by Anderson Rose, Whistler’s patron and solicitor. As “ill and 
worried,’”? Howell describes Whistler on one of the visits to Mr. Rose, | 
and there was every reason he should be. A Mr. Blott figures in other 
transactions. Whistler’s letters to him have been sold and published, 
and it would be useless to ignore their relations. Money for the White 
House had to be obtained. To Mr. Blott he gave his Carlyle as security 
for a hundred and fifty pounds, agreeing to pay interest, offering other 
pictures as security if a sum of four hundred could be advanced. 
Cheques were protested, writs were threatened. The pictures he 
could not sell went wandering about as hostages. The Mother for 
awhile was with Mrs. Noseda, the Strand printseller. We have heard 
that she would have sold it for a hundred pounds. Mr. Rawlinson, 
who saw it either there or at Mr. Graves’, has told us that nobody 
could have bought it under such circumstances, after having seen 
it in Whistler’s bedroom, where it had hung and been shown by him 
with reverence. When Whistler heard that Mrs. Noseda was offering 
the picture for this price, he is said to have gone at once to remonstrate, 
and by his vehemence to have made her ill. 

One man who helped him through these troubled times was 
Henry Graves, head of the firm in Pall Mall. Graves, introduced 
to Whistler by Howell, agreed to engrave the portrait of Carlyle in 
mezzotint, and Howell bought the copyright of the engraving from 
Whistler for eighty pounds and six proofs. W. Josey was commissioned 
to make the plate. Three hundred signed proofs of a first state were 
to be printed. The plate would not stand so large an edition ; it was 
steel-faced and, as the steel-facing of mezzotint was not possible, 
turned out a failure. The attempt to remove the steel ruined the 
ground, and Josey had to be called in to go over it again. In the first 
state, the floor was perfectly smooth, but, the steel-facing taken off, a 
spot appeared in the plate, which never could be got out and remained 
there through the edition. After every seventy proofs printed, Josey 
164 [1878 


iil 
en 
i i) 


At A aa 
LANA HN 

Cot ee i 
Hl i 


PORTRAIT OF CICELY HENRIETTA, MISS ALEXANDER 
HARMONY IN GREY AND GREEN 
In the National Gallery, London 
(See page 121) 


PORTRAIT OF F. R. LEYLAND 
ARRANGEMENT IN BLACK 


OIL 


In the Charles L. Freer Collection, National Gallery of American Art 
(See page 124) 


Tue Wuitt House 


had to work on the plate and bring it back, as well as he could, to its 
original condition. Whistler did not like the first proofs and offered 
to show the printers how todothem. Mr. A. Graves went with him to 
Holdgate’s, the printer, in London Street. Whistler brought his own 
ink, put on an apron, inked the plate as he would an etched one, while 
the whole shop looked on. When the plate, wiped and ready, was put 
through the press, it came out a shadow, the ink being far too weak. 
Whistler did not try a second time. Mr. Graves preserved the proof, 
writing on it that Whistler pulled it, and sold it for three guineas, 
to whom he does not remember. Eventually Whistler was satisfied, 
for Howell, on December 2, 1878, gave Whistler what he calls his first 
proof, and the diary says: “‘ Whistler and the Doctor were delighted.” 
It is also recorded in the diary that one of Whistler’s six proofs was sold 
to Lord Beaconsfield. 

The print of the Carlyle was very successful. At Howell’s sug- 
gestion, Graves agreed to give Whistler a thousand pounds for a por- 
trait of Disraeli, and the copyright: a plate to be made from it also. 

Mr. Alan S. Cole says Whistler went to see Disraeli : 

“¢ September 19 (1878). Called on J., who told me of his interview 
with Lord Beaconsfield as to painting a portrait of him. He had been 
down at Hughenden—saw the old gentleman, who, however, declined.” 

Whistler’s version was : 

‘“‘ Everything was most wonderful. We were the two artists 
together—recognising each other at a glance! ‘If I sit to any one, 
it will be to you, Mr. Whistler,’ were Disraeli’s last words as he left 
me at the gate. And then he sat to Millais ! ” 

This scheme falling through, Graves commissioned Josey to en- 
grave the Mother, and afterwards the Rosa Corder, painted as a com~ 
mission from Howell. Whistler told us he offered the portrait as a 
present to Howell, who declined and insisted on paying a hundred 
guineas for it, the amount entered in Howell’s diary as paid to Whistler 
on September 9, 1878. It was sold to R. A. Canfield in 1903 for two 
thousand pounds, and now belongs to Mr. Henry C. Frick. Though 
these mezzotints were successful when published, collectors thought 
as little of them as they did at the time of those of a century earlier, 
and for years proofs signed by both artist and engraver could be picked 
up for less than the published price. 

1878] 165 


James McNeitt WHISTLER 


After the two pictures had been engraved by Josey, Howell 
deposited in the same way three of the Nocturnes with Graves: 
The Falling Rocket, The Fire Wheel, Old Battersea Bridge—Blue and 
Gold, and also The Fur Jacket. These pictures were not engraved. 
Whistler had not a minute to spare from legal troubles and impatient 
creditors. ‘‘ Poor J. turned up depressed—very hard up, and fearful 
of getting old,” Mr. Cole wrote in his diary for October 16, 1878. 
Whistler had reason for depression. It was now that Howell’s diary 
records his purchase of the Irving for ten pounds and a sealskin coat. 
There is nothing more tragic in the story of Rembrandt’s bankruptcy. 


CHAPTER XIX: THE TRIAL. THE YEAR EIGHTEEN 
SEVENTY-EIGHT, 


THE action Whistler v. Ruskin, was heard on November 25-26, 1878. 

John Ruskin, leader of taste, critic of art, prophet, and propounder 
of the gospel of “ the Beautiful,” led not only a devout following, 
but that enormous public which believes blindly in Britons. Whistler 
knew that either he or Ruskin must settle the question whether an 
artist may paint what he wants in his own way, though this may not 
be understood by the patron, the critic, the Academy, or the real 
British judge, the man in the street ; whether the artist should rule 
or beruled. The case was, Whistler said, ‘‘ between the Brush and the 
Pen.” His motives were ignored, the proceedings made a jest, and the 
verdict treated as a farce. Few could, or do, realise that he was in 
earnest, that the trial was a defence of his principles, and the verdict 
a justification of his belief. 

At the time Whistler was to the British public a charlatan, a 
mountebank. Ruskin was to the People a preacher, the professor of 
art. Whistler denied the right of Ruskin, master of English literature 
populariser of pictures, to declare himself infallible, as he did, his head 
turned by his success in defence of the Pre-Raphaelites and booming 
of Turner. As to his discoveries, Turner was a full R.A. and Carpaccio 
had been accepted for centuries before he “discovered” them. 
Ruskin did but popularise Carpaccio, and buy and sell Turner. So 
good a friend of Ruskin’s as W. M. Rossetti said that he was “ sub- 
166 [1878 


THE TRIAL 


stantially wrong in the Whistler matter,” that his mind broke down at 
times, and that his mental troubles began in 1860. His conceit and his 
vanity can be explained in no other way. Unfortunately he lived in 
the only country where his arrogant pretensions would then have been 
countenanced, though, owing to the present acceptance of England 
and everything English, he has become something of a fetish abroad, 
now that he is exposed and discredited at home. He was rich, he was a 
University man, he contributed long letters to the Times. He was a 
typical new British patron of the arts, for to him the financial side of 
connoisseurship was of the greatest importance—‘ two hundred 
guineas for flinging a pot of paint.” Moreover, he was a master of 
English ; therefore he could commit any absurdity. As Whistler said, 
political economists considered him a great art critic, and artists looked 
upon him as a great political economist. Sometimes we have wondered 
if. there was not another reason for Ruskin’s venom. He never appre- 
ciated the great artists of the world, save certain Italians recog- 
nised long before. His estimates of Velasquez and Rembrandt, and 
his comparison between Turner and Constable, prove how little his 
now unheeded sermons were ever worth. While he failed to com- 
prehend Charles Keene, he went into ecstasies over Kate Greenaway. 
He loved Stacy Marks and hated Snyders. Whistler, knowing this, 
may have laughed. Mr. Collingwood wrote that, long before the trial, 
Whistler “ had made overtures to the great critic through Mr. Swin- 
burne, the poet; but he had not been taken seriously.” It is certain 
Ruskin was not taken seriously by the great artist. Swinburne sug- 
gested a meeting in a letter of August 11, 1865, to which we have re- 
ferred (published in the Library Edition of the Works of Fohn Ruskin), 
but in such words that we gather there must have been some sort of 
misunderstanding already between Whistler and Ruskin. Swinburne 
wanted to take Ruskin to the studio and represented Whistler as de- 
sirous of meeting him. It is likely that Whistler, knowing Ruskin’s 
power in the Press, was willing to be written about by him, and also that 
Ruskin cherished whatever reason for dislike he had for Whistler. 
Anderson Rose prepared the case, and we know the pains and trouble 
Whistler took over it. Judge Parry has shown us letters to his father 
which prove this. Whistler warned Rose there was no use in making 
him out a popular painter; better show the jury that the Academy 
1878] 167 


James McNeitt WuiIsTLER 


and Academicians were against him. He thought, at first, that the 
artists would be on his side and would unite with him to drive the false 
prophet out of the temple. But Ruskin the critic was to them more 
powerful than Whistler the painter, and when the time came they 
sneaked away, all except Albert Moore. Besides, there was the hope 
that the Yankee would lose. Whistler told us “ they hoped they could 
drive me out of the country, or kill me! And if I hadn’t had the 
constitution of a Government mule, they would!” 

Charles Keene, whom Whistler considered the greatest English 
artist since Hogarth, could write on November 24, 1878 : 

“‘ Whistler’s case against Ruskin comes off, I believe, on Monday. 
He wants to subpoena me as a witness as to whether he is (as Ruskin 
Says) an impostor or not. I told him I should be glad to record my 
opinion, but begged him to do without me if he could. They say it will 
most likely be settled on the point of law without going into evidence, 
but if the evidence is adduced, it will be the greatest lark that has been 
known for a long time in the courts.” 

Keene did not dare to stand up for Whistler and for art, and the 
bitterness is in those last words—“ a lark!” 

In the Exchequer Division at Westminster the action for libel, 
in which ‘ Mr. James Abbott McNeill Whistler, am artist, seeks to 
recover damages against Mr. John Ruskin, the well-known author 
and art critic,” came up before Baron Huddleston and a special jury. 
Our account is compiled chiefly from the reports published in the 
Times and the Daily News, November 26 and 27, 1878, from The 
Gentle Art, and from what Whistler, Mr. Rossetti, Armstrong, Mr. 
Graves, and others who were present have told us. According to 
Lady Burne-Jones, Ruskin had been delighted at the prospect of the 
trial : 

“‘Tt’s nuts and nectar to me, the notion of having to answer for 
myself in court, and the whole thing will enable me to assert some 
principles of art economy which I’ve never got into the public’s head 
by writing: but may get sent over all the world vividly in a newspaper 
report or two. Meanwhile J’ve heard nothing of the matter yet, and 
am only afraid the fellow will be better advised.” 

Nuts and nectar turned to gall and vinegar. In the early winter . 
of 1878 rumours of his ill-health reached the papers. Lady Burne- 
168 [1878 


THE TRIAL 


Jones adds that, when the action was brought, “although he had 
quite recovered from his illness, he was not allowed to appear ”—a 
curious sort of recovery. But he was well enough on the morning 
of the 26th to write to Charles Eliot Norton that “ to-day I believe 
the comic Whistler lawsuit is to be decided.” 

The court was crowded. Mr. Serjeant Parry and Mr. Petheram 
were counsel for the plaintiff, and the Attorney-General (Sir John 
Holker) and Mr. Bowen for the defendant. Mr. Serjeant Parry opened 
the case for Whistler, ‘‘ who has followed the profession of an artist for 
many years, while Mr. Ruskin is a gentleman well known to all of us, 
and holding perhaps the highest position in Europe or America as an 
art critic. Some of his works are destined to immortality, and it is 
the more surprising, therefore, that a gentleman holding such a posi- 
tion could traduce another in a way that would lead that other to 
come into a court of law to ask for damages. The jury, after hearing 
the case, will come to the conclusion that a great injustice has been 
done. Mr. Whistler, in the United States, has earned a reputation 
as a painter and an artist. He is not merely a painter, but has like- 
wise distinguished himself in the capacity of etcher, achieving con- 
siderable honours in that department of art. He has been an unwearied 
worker in his profession, always desiring to succeed, and if he had 
formed an erroneous opinion, he should not have been treated with 
contempt and ridicule. Mr. Ruskin edits a publication called Fors 
Clavigera, that has a large circulation among artists and art patrons. 
In the July number of 1877 appeared a criticism of the pictures in the 
Grosvenor, containing the paragraph which is the defamatory matter 
complained of. Sir Coutts Lindsay is described as an amateur, both 
in art and shopkeeping, who must take up one business or the other. 
Mannerisms and errors are pointed out in the work of Burne-Jones, 
but whatever their extent, his pictures ‘ are never affected or indolent. 
The work is natural to the painter, however strange to us, wrought 
with the utmost conscience and care, however far, to his or our desire 
the result may seem to be incomplete. Scarcely so much can be said 
for any other pictures of the modern schools. Their eccentricities 
are almost always in some degree forced, and their imperfections 
gratuitously, if not impertinently, indulged. For Mr. Whistler’s 
own sake, no less than for the protection of the purchaser Sir Coutts 
1878] 169 


James McNertt WHIsTLER 


Lindsay ought not to have admitted works into the gallery in which 
the ill-educated conceit of the artist so nearly approaches the aspect 
of wilfulimposture. I have seen and heard much of cockney impudence 
before now, but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred 
guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face.” Mr. Ruskin 
pleaded that the alleged libel was privileged as being a fair and bona 
fide criticism upon a painting which the plaintiff had exposed to public 
view. But the terms in which Mr. Ruskin has spoken of the plaintiff 
are unfair and ungentlemanly, and are calculated to do, and have done 
him, considerable injury, and it will be for the jury to say what damages 
the plaintiff is entitled to.” 

Whistler was the first witness. He said: ‘I studied in Paris 
with Du Maurier, Poynter, Armstrong. I was awarded a gold medal 
at The Hague. ... My etchings are in the British Museum and 
Windsor Castle collections. I exhibited eight pictures at the Gros- 
venor Gallery in the summer of 1877. No pictures were exhibited 
there save on invitation. J was invited by Sir Coutts Lindsay to 
exhibit. The first was a Nocturne in Black and Gold—The Falling 
Rocket. The second, a Nocturne in Blue and Silver [since called Blue 
and Gold—Old Battersea Bridge]. The third, a Nocturne in Blue 
and Gold, belonging to the Hon. Mrs. Percy Wyndham. The fourth, 
a Nocturne in Blue and Silver, belonging to Mrs. Leyland. The fifth, 
an Arrangement in Black—Irving as Philip Il. of Spain. The sixth 
a Harmony in Amber and Black. The seventh, an Arrangement in 
Brown. In addition to these, there was a portrait of Mr. Carlyle. 
That portrait was painted from sittings Mr. Carlyle gave me. It 
has since been engraved, and the artist’s proofs were all subscribed 
for. The Nocturnes, all but two, were sold before they went to the 
Grosvenor Gallery. One of them was sold to the Hon. Percy Wyndham 
for two hundred guineas—the one in Blue and Gold. One I sent to 
Mr. Graham in lieu of a former commission, the amount of which 
was a hundred and fifty guineas. A third one, Blue and Silver, | 
presented to Mrs. Leyland. The one that was for sale was in Black 
and Gold—The Falling Rocket.” 

Curiously, the only one for sale was pounced on by Ruskin. The 
coxcomb was trying to get two hundred guineas, and the British 
commercial critic spotted it. 

170 [1878 


Tue TRIAL 


Asked whether, since the publication of the criticism, he had sold 
a Nocturne, Whistler answered: ‘“‘ Not by any means at the same 
price as before.” 

The portraits of Irving and Carlyle were produced in court, and 
he is said to have described the Irving as “ a large impression—a sketch ; 
it was not intended as a finished picture.” We do not believe he said 
anything of the sort. 

He was then asked for his definition of a Nocturne: “I have 
perhaps, meant rather to indicate an artistic interest alone in the 
work, divesting the picture from any outside sort of interest which 
might have been otherwise attached to it. It is an arrangement of 
line, form, and colour first, and I make use of any incident of it which 
shall bring about a symmetrical result. Among my works are some 
night pieces; and I have chosen the word Nocturne because it 
generalises and simplifies the whole set of them.” 

The Falling Rocket, though it is difficult here to follow the case, 
was evidently produced at this point upside down; Whistler de- 
scribing it as a night piece, said it represented the fireworks at 
Cremorne. 

Attorney-General: ‘“ Not a view of Cremorne ? ” 

W bistler : ‘* If it were called a view of Cremorne, it would certainly 
bring about nothing but disappointment on the part of the beholders. 
(Laughter.) It is an artistic arrangement.” 

Attorney-General : “‘ Why do you call Mr. Irving an Arrangement in 
Black?” (Laughter.) 

The judge interposed, though in jest, for there was more laughter, 
and explained that the picture, not Mr. Irving, was the Arrangement. 

Whistler: ‘‘ All these works are impressions of my own. I make 
them my study. I suppose them to appeal to none but those who 
may understand the technical matter.” 

And he added that it would be possible to see the pictures in 
Westminster Palace Hotel close by, where he had placed them for 
the purpose. 

Attorney-General: ‘I suppose you are willing to admit that your 
pictures exhibit some eccentricities. You have been told that over 
and over again?” 

Whistler: “ Yes, very often.” (Laughter.) 

1878] 171 


James McNett WHuIsTLER 


Attorney-General: ‘‘ You send them to the gallery to invite the 
admiration of the public ? ” 

Whistler; ‘That would be such vast absurdity on my part that 
I don’t think I could.” (Laughter.) 

Attorney-General : ‘‘ Can you tell me how long it took you to knock 
off that Nocturne?” | 

Whistler: “‘I beg your pardon?” (Laughter.) 

Attorney-General: “I am afraid that I am using a term that 
applies rather perhaps to my own work. .. .” 

Whistler: . . . “‘ Let us say then, how long did I take to ‘ knock 
off >—I think that is it—to knock off that Nocturne; well, as well as 
I remember, about a day. . . . I may have still put a few more touches 
to it the next day if the painting were not dry. I had better say, 
then, that I was two days at work on it.” 

Attorney-General: “The labour of two days, then, is that for 
which you ask two hundred guineas ? ” 

Whistler: “No; I ask it for the knowledge of a lifetime.” 

Monn Gepiede “You don’t approve of criticism ? ” 

Whistler: “1 should not disapprove in any way of technical 
criticism by a man whose life is passed in the practice of the science 
which he criticises ; but for the opinion of a man whose life is not so 
passed, I would have as little regard as you would if he expressed an 
opinion on law.” 

Attorney-General : “* You expect to be criticised ? ” 

Whistler: ‘Yes, certainly; and I do not expect to be affected 
by it until it comes to be a case of this kind.” 

The Nocturne, the Blue and Silver, was then produced. 

Whistler: ‘It represents Battersea Bridge by moonlight.” 

The Fudge: “Is this part of the picture at the top Old Battersea 
Bridge ? Are those figures on the top of the bridge intended for 
people ? ” 

Whistler: ‘They are just what you like.” 

The Fudge: ‘“ That is a barge beneath ? ” 

Whistler: “Yes, | am very much flattered at your seeing that. 
The picture is simply a representation of moonlight. My whole 
scheme was only to bring about a certain harmony of colour.” 

The Fudge : “ How long did it take you to paint that picture ? ” 
172 ) [1878 


LEYLAND 


R 


FE 
COLOUR AND PINK 


MRS 


PORTRAIT OF 
SYMPHONY IN FLESH 


L 


tH 


OI 


Esq, 


’ 


. Frick 


C 


* 


In the possession o 


) 


(See page 125 


PORTRAIT. OF MISS LEYLAND 


PASTEL 


In the possession of the Executors of Mrs. F. R. Leyland 
( See page 124) 


THE TRIAL 


Whistler : “ 1 completed the work in one day, after having arranged 
the idea in my mind.’’* 

‘The court adjourned, and the jury went to see the pictures at 
the Westminster Palace Hotel. When, on their return, the Nocturne 
in Black and Gold—The Falling Rocket, was produced, the Attorney- 
General asked : 

“* How long did it take you to paint that ? ” 

Whistler : “One whole day and part of another.” 

Attorney-General: ‘‘What is the peculiar beauty of that 
picture ? ” 

Whistler: “It would be impossible for me to explain to you, 
I am afraid, although I dare say I could to a sympathetic ear.” 

Attorney-General : “ Do you not think that anybody looking at the 
picture might fairly come to the conclusion that it had no particular 
beauty ?” 

Whistler: ‘1 have strong evidence that Mr. Ruskin did come to 
that conclusion.” 

Attorney-General: “‘ Do you think it fair that Mr. Ruskin should 
come to that conclusion ? ” 

Whistler: ‘‘ What might be fair to Mr. Ruskin, I cannot answer. 
No artist of culture would come to that conclusion. 

Attorney-General: ‘Do you offer that picture to the public as 
one of particular beauty, fairly worth two hundred guineas ?” 

W bistler : “‘ I offer it as a work that I have conscientiously executed 
and that I think worth the money. I would hold my reputation upon 
this, as I would upon any of my other works.” 

Mr. W. M. Rossetti was the next witness. He was Ruskin’s friend 
as well as Whistler’s, and the position was not pleasant. But, he has 
written us, he was “compelled to act, willy-nilly, in opposition to 
Ruskin’s interest in the action.” 

Rossetti: “I consider the Blue and Silver an artistic and beautiful 


* This picture then belonged to Mr. Graham, and some years after at his 
sale at Christie’s was received with hisses. It was purchased by Mr. Robert 
H. C. Harrison for sixty pounds, and at the close of the London Whistler 
Memorial Exhibition was sold for two thousand guineas to the National Arts 
Collection Fund, by whom it was presented to the nation. It now hangs in the 
National Gallery. See Chapter XXIX. 

1878] 173 


James McNertt WuisTLER 


representation of a pale but bright moonlight. I admire Mr. Whistler’s 
pictures, but not without exception. I appreciate the meaning of the 
titles. The Falling Rocket is not one of the pictures I admire.” 

Attorney-General: “Is it a gem?” (Laughter.) 

Rossetti : “ No.” 

Attorney-General: “Is it an exquisite painting ?” 

Rossetti : “ No.” 3 

Attorney-General: “Is it very beautiful ? ” 

Rossetit : “ No.” 

Attorney-General : “Is it a work of art?” 

Rossetit. s S° Yessit 18:7 

Attorney-General : “Is it worth two hundred guineas?” 

Rossetigca eyear: 

Albert Moore said that Whistler’s pictures were beautiful, and 
that no other painter could have succeeded in doing them. The 
Black and Gold he looked upon as simply marvellous, the most con- 
summate art. Asked if there was eccentricity in the picture, he said 
he should call it originality. 

W. G. Wills testified to the knowledge shown in the pictures; they 
were the works of a man of genius. 

Mr. Algernon Graves was in court to give evidence to the popularity 
of the Carlyle. As the picture was not catalogued when exhibited at 
the Grosvenor, Baron Huddleston ruled that there was no proof of 
its having been exhibited in 1877, and he was not called. These 
were the only witnesses for Whistler, though we have seen a letter 
he wrote to Anderson Rose suggesting Haweis, who had preached 
“‘ a poem of praise ” about The Peacock Room, and Prince Teck, who 
might be asked to swear that he “ thought it a great piece of art.” We 
have also seen the draft of a letter to Tissot upon whose aid he relied. 

The Attorney-General submitted there was no case. But Baron 
Huddleston could not deny that the criticism held Whistler’s work 
up to ridicule and contempt; that so far it was libellous, and must, 
therefore, go to the jury. It was for the Attorney-General to prove 
it fair and honest criticism. 

The Attorney-General’s address to the jury began with praise of 
Ruskin, it went on with ridicule of the testimony for the plaintiff, it 
finished with contempt for Whistler and his work. 

174 | [1878 


THE TRIAL 


‘The Nocturnes were not worthy the name of great works of art. 
He had that morning looked into the dictionary for the meaning of 
coxcomb, and found that the word carried the old idea of the licensed 
jester who had a cap on his head with a cock’s comb init. If that were 
the true definition, Mr. Whistler should not complain, because his 
pictures were capital jests which had afforded much amusement to the 
public. He said, without fear of contradiction, that if Mr. Whistler 
founded his reputation on the pictures he had shown in the Grosvenor 
Gallery, the Nocturne in Black and Gold, the Nocturne in Blue and 
Silver, his Arrangement of Irving in Black, his representation of the 
Ladies in Brown, and his Symphonies in Grey and Yellow, he was a mere 
pretender to the art of painting.” 

In Ruskin’s absence, Burne-Jones was the first witness called for 
the defence. Lady Burne-Jones says, in her Memorials of Edward 
Burne-Jones, that on November 2, Ruskin had written to him: 

“‘T gave your name to the blessed lawyer, as chief of men to whom 
they might refer for anything which, in their wisdom, they can’t 
discern unaided concerning me.” 

She adds that for her husband: “ Few positions could have been 
more annoying or difficult for the paragraph containing the sentence 
in question—one of Ruskin’s severest condemnations—was practically 
a comparison between Mr. Whistler’s work and Edward’s own. But 
the subject covered so much wider ground than any personality that 
Edward was finally able to put this thought aside, and did with calmness 
what he had undertaken to do, namely—endorse Ruskin’s criticism that 
good workmanship was essential to a good picture.” 

Walter Crane stated in his Reminiscences that he met Burne- 
Jones at dinner at Leyland’s not long before the trial; and that then 
Burne-Jones would not see Whistler’s merit as an artist. ‘“ He seemed 
to think there was only one right way of painting. . . . Under the 
circumstances he could hardly afford to allow any credit to Whistler.” 

In court Burne-Jones temporised. He admitted Whistler’s art, 
but regretted the want of finish in Whistler’s pictures; so strengthen- 
ing the impression of the laziness, levity, or looseness of Whistler. 
In his “ deliberate judgment” Mrs. Leyland’s Blue and Silver was 
a work of art, but a very incomplete one. “It did not show the 
finish of a complete work of art,” yet “it is masterly. Neither in 
1878] 175 


James McNett WuistTLER 


composition, detail, nor form has the picture any quality whatever, 
but in colour it has a very fine quality. . . . Blue and Silver—Old 
Battersea Bridge, in colour is even better than the other. It is more 
formless, it is bewildering in form. As to composition and detail, 
there is none whatever. It has no finish. I do not think Mr. Whistler 
intended it to be regarded as a finished picture.” 

Mr. Bowen: “ Now, take the Nocturne in Black and Gold—The 
Falling Rocket, is that, in your opinion, a work of art ? ” 

Burne-fones: ‘No, I cannot say that it is. It is only one of a 
thousand failures that artists have made in their efforts to paint 
night.” 

Mr. Bowen: “Is that picture in your judgment worth two hundred 
guineas ? ” 

Burne-fones: “No, I cannot say it is, seeing how much careful 
work men do for much less. Mr. Whistler gave infinite promise at 
first, but I do not think he has fulfilled it. I think he has evaded 
the great difficulty of painting, and has not tested his powers by carrying 
it out. The difficulties in painting increase daily as the work pro-. 
gresses, and that is the reason why so many of us fail. We are none 
of us perfect. The danger is this, that if unfinished pictures become 
common, we shall arrive at a stage of mere manufacture and the art 
of the country will be degraded.” 

Mr. Frith, R.A., was next called. Truly, Ruskin found himself 
with strange supporters. Frith was chosen, we have been told, because 
Ruskin wanted some one who could not be thought biased in his favour. 

Mr. Bowen: “Are the pictures works of art?” 

Frith: “I should say not.” 

Mr. Bowen: “Is the Nocturne in Blue and Gold a serious work 
ofiarei?? 

Frith: “Not tome. It is not worth, in my opinion, two hundred 
guineas. Old Battersea Bridge does not convey the impression of 
moonlight to me in the slightest degree. The colour does not represent 
any more than you could get from a bit of wallpaper or silk.” 

In cross-examination he contradicted himself, and said that he 
thought Mr. Whistler had “‘ very great power as an artist.” . 

Ruskin’s final supporter was Tom Taylor, critic of the Times. 
No, he said, the Nocturne 1n Black and Gold was not a good picture, 
176 [1878 


THe TRIAL 


and, to prove it, he read his own criticism in the Times, and his assertion 
there that the Nocturnes were worth doing because they were the only 
things that Whistler could do. 

A portrait by Titian was then shown, in order to explain Burne- 
Jones’ idea of finish, and the jury, mistaking it for a Whistler, would 
have none of it. 

Mr. Bowen, in summing up the case, said that all that Ruskin 
had done was to express an opinion on Whistler’s pictures—an opinion 
to which he adhered. This was about all he could say except, in 
conclusion, to appeal to the jury. There was no defence. Mr. Serjeant 
Parry, in his reply, pointed out that they had not dared to ask if 
Whistler deserved to be stigmatised as a wilful impostor, and that even 
if Ruskin had not been well enough to attend the court “he might 
have been examined before a commission. His decree has gone forth 
that Whistler’s pictures were worthless. He has not supported 
that by evidence. He has not condescended to give reasons for the 
view he has taken, he has treated us with contempt, as he treated 
Whistler. He has said: ‘I, Mr. Ruskin, seated on my throne of 
art, say what I please and expect all the world to agree with me.’ 
Mr. Ruskin is a great writer, but not as a man; as a man he has 
degraded himself. His tone in writing the article is personal and 
malicious. Mr. Ruskin’s criticism of Mr. Whistler’s pictures is almost 
exclusively in the nature of a personal attack, a pretended criticism 
of art which is really a criticism upon the man himself, and calculated 
toinjure him. It was written recklessly, and for the purpose of holding 
him up to ridicule and contempt. Mr. Ruskin has gone out of his 
way to attack Mr. Whistler personally, and must answer for the con- 
sequences of having written a damnatory attack upon the painter. 
This is what is called pungent criticism, stinging criticism, but it 
is defamatory, and I hope the jury will mark their disapproval by 
their verdict.” 

The Judge pointed out that “ there are certain words by Mr. Ruskin, 
about which I should think no one would entertain a doubt: thoce 
words amount to a libel. The critic should confine himself to criticism 
and not make it a veil for personal censure or for showing his power. 
The question for the jury is, did Mr. Whistler’s ideas of art justify the 
language used by Mr. Ruskin? And the further question is whether 
1878] M 177 


James McNeiLt WHISTLER 


the insult offered—if insult there has been—is of such a gross character 
as to call for substantial damages ? Whether it is a case for merely 
contemptuous damages to the extent of a farthing, or something of 
that sort, indicating that it is one which ought never to have been 
brought into court, and in which no pectiniary damage has been 
sustained ; or whether the case is one which calls for damages in some 
small sum as indicating the opinion of the jury that the offender has 
gone beyond the strict letter of the law.” 

After an hour’s deliberation, the jury gave their verdict for he 
plaintifi—damages one farthing. The Judge emphasised his contempt 
by giving judgment for Whistler without costs; that is, both sides 
had to pay. 

It is said that Whistler wore the farthing on his watch-chain. We 
never saw it, we never knew him to wear a watch-chain. But he 
made a drawing of the farthing for The Gentle Art. 

“The whole thing was a hateful affair,” Burne-Jones wrote to 
Rossetti, and many agreed with him, though for other reasons. The 
Times, the Spectator, and the Portfolio pronounced the verdict satis- 
factory to neither party, virtually a censure upon both. Mr. Graves, 
who watched the trial without the responsibility he was disposed to 
meet, says: 

“ T have always felt that, had the plaintiff’s counsel impressed upon 
the jury that Mr. Ruskin had mentioned the price asked for the picture, 
a matter that has always been outside the critic’s province, as well 
as criticising them as works of art, the result to Mr. Whistler would 
have been more in his favour. Mr. Tom Taylor was never asked 
whether he had ever criticised the price as well as the quality.” 

Armstrong has told us of the suppression of important letters: 
‘A little while before the trial I met Whistler one evening at the 
Arts Club, and he told me of his hopes of a favourable result. My 
sympathies were entirely on his side. He assured me that he had 
evidence, which I believe could not fail to be effective, in the shape 
of letters from Leighton, P.R.A.; Burton, Director of the National 
Gallery ; and Poynter, R.A., then Director for Art at $.K., speaking 
highly of the moonlight pictures. These letters seemed to me most 
important, for they were from people in official positions, whose good 
words would have weighed with the British jurymen. Nothing was 
178 [1878 


Tue TRIAL 


said about these letters in the newspaper reports, and I asked Jimmie 
the reason for this omission of the strongest evidence on his side. 
He told me that the writers of the letters had objected to their being 
put in, and so he had refrained from using them, and without the 
personal testimony of the writers they would not have been accepted 
as evidence in court. After the trial I saw Holker and asked him if he 
had been helping to smirch any more poor artists. He replied that he 
was bound to do the best he could for his client. I told him he would 
never have allowed the exhibition of the pictures in court if he had 
been Whistler’s counsel, and he asked : ‘ Why didn’t Jimmie have me ?’ 
I explained that I had recommended his being retained, but it was 
objected that his fee would be too heavy, and he said, ‘ I’d have done 
it for nothing for Jimmie.’ I was very sorry that Mr. Ruskin was not 
punished.” 

Arthur Severn wrote us that, at the Ruskin trial, he “‘ was on the 
opposite side, although my sympathies were rather with Whistler, 
whose Nocturne in Black and Gold I knew to be carefully painted. 
Whenever we met he was most courteous, understanding my position. 
During the trial one of the Nocturnes was handed across the court 
over the people’s heads, so that Whistler might verify it as his work. 
On its way, an old gentleman with a bald head got a tap from the 
frame, then the picture showed signs of falling out of its frame, and 
when Serjeant Parry turned to Whistler and said ‘ Is that your work, 
Mr. Whistler ?’ the artist, putting his eyeglass up and with his slight 
American twang, said, ‘ Well, it was, but if it goes on much longer 
in that way, I don’t think it will be.’ And when Ruskin’s Titian was 
shown, ‘ Oh, come, we’ve had enough of those Whistlers,’ said a jury- 
man. I thought Whistler looked anxious whilst the jury was away. 
Another trial came on so as not to waste time. The court was dark, 
and candles had to be brought in—it seemed to be about some rope, 
and huge coils were on the solicitors’ table. A stupid clerk was being 
examined. Nothing intelligent could be got out of him, and at last 
Mr. Day, one of the counsel (afterwards the judge), said, ‘ Give him the 
rope’s end,’ which produced great laughter in court, in which Whistler 
heartily joined. Then, suddenly, a hush fell; the jury returned a 
verdict for Whistler, damages one farthing.” 

There was a report of an application for a new trial. A desire 
1878] 179 


James McNeitt WHISTLER 


was expressed that friends of artist and critic might adjust the dispute. 
But Whistler made no application, called for no arbitration. He 
accepted his farthing damages. The British public rallied to their 
prophet, and got up a subscription for the rich man. It was managed 
by the Fine Art Society. The account was opened at the Union 
Bank of London in the names of Burne-Jones, F. S. Ellis, and Mr. 
Marcus B. Huish, and by December 10 a subscription list was published, 
amounting already to one hundred and fifty-one pounds, five shillings 
and sixpence, headed by Burne-Jones, five guineas. The costs were 
estimated at three hundred and eighty-five pounds, and Mr. E. T. Cook 
says that eventually they were paid by his friends. 

According to W. M. Rossetti, “‘ Whistler wrote to Anderson Rose, 
saying it would be at least equally appropriate for a band of sub- 
scribers to pay his costs; and, he added, ‘ And in the event of a sub- 
scription I would willingly contribute my own mite.’ ” 

Mr. J. P. Heseltine started a fund for Whistler, and a list was opened 
at the office of L’ Art, 134 New Bond Street. But nothing came of it, 
except that Whistler sent one of his pastels to Mr. Heseltine. For 
Whistler, the poor man, the costs were not paid, and he went through 
the bankruptcy court. 

Letters flowed into the papers. There were interviews. Witticisms 
went the rounds. Whistler is reported to have said, “‘ Well, you know, 
I don’t go so far as to Burne-Jones, but really somebody ought to burn 
Jones’ pictures!” A few journalists did not forget that Whistler 
was an artist, a few people were sympathetic, a few congratulations 
were received at the White House. If Whistler was disappointed he 
kept it to himself. He would have liked better to get his costs and 
damages, he said. But the verdict was a moral triumph. He had 
gone into court not for damages but to vindicate his position, and, 
therefore, that of artists. 

Whistler explained this position in Whistler v. Ruskin—Art and 
Art Critics (December 1878), the first of his series of pamphlets in 
brown-paper covers. It was printed by Spottiswoode, though his 
idea was to have it lithographed by Way, and published by Chatto 
and Windus. He dedicated it to Albert Moore. It is a protest 
against the folly of the Pen in venturing to criticise the Brush. Litera- 
ture is left to the literary man, science to the scientist, why then 
180 _ [1878 


PORTRAIT OF MRS? LOUIS BUTH 
ARRANGEMENT IN BLACK. NO. II 


OIL 


In the possession of the Executors of the Family 


(See page 126) 


ae 


FANNY LEYLAND 
STUDY FOR THE ETCHINGA 9G nos 
PENCIL SKETCH 


Formerly in the possession of J. H, Wren, Esq. i: i 
(See page 124) af 


BANKRUPTCY 


should art be at the mercy of “‘ the one who was never in it,”’ but whose 
boast it is that he is doing good to art. The critics “ are all ‘ doing 
good ’—yes, they all do good to Art. Poor Art! what a sad state 
the slut is in, an these gentlemen shall help her.” Ruskin resigned 
the Slade Professorship. He wrote to Dean Liddell from Brantwood 
(November 28, 1878) that the result of the Whistler trial left him no 
option. “I cannot hold a chair from which I have no power of ex- 
pressing judgment without being taxed for it by British Law.” Unless 
he continued to be the Pope and the Prophet he believed himself, 
he could not go on. He could not stand criticism, and he collapsed 
when his criticism was questioned. The trial, he wrote, made his 
professorship a farce. Whistler suggested that Ruskin might fill a 
Chair of Ethics instead. “* 1 faut vivre,” was the cry of the art critic, 
but Whistler said, “ Fe n’en vots pas la nécessité.” 

Whistler won. The trial was a triumph. But he had to pay 
heavily for his victory. 


CHAPTER XX: BANKRUPTCY. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN 
SEVENTY-EIGHT AND EIGHTEEN SEVENTY-NINE. 


WuISTLER’s financial affairs were in hopeless confusion. The builder’s 
estimate for the White House was largely exceeded, the cost of the trial 
had to be paid for, the atelier waited for pupils, and the debts brought 
from Lindsey Row were many. He wrote to his mother at Hastings of 
his economies and his hopes to pay his debts, but he did not know the 
meaning of economy. There is a legend of a grocer who had let a 
bill for tomatoes and fruit run up to six hundred pounds, and when, 
after the trial, he insisted on settlement, Whistler said : 

“¢ How—what—why—why, of course, you have sent these things— 
most excellent things—and they have been eaten, you know, by most 
excellent people. Think what a splendid advertisement. And some- 
times, you know, the tomatoes are not quite up to the mark, the fruit, 
you know, not quite fresh. And if you go into these unseemly dis- 
cussions about the bill—well, you know, I shall have to go into dis- 
cussions about all this—and think how it would hurt your reputation 
with all these extraordinary people. I think the best thing is not to 
1878] : 181 


James McNett WHISTLER 


refer to the past—I’ll let it go, and in the future we’ll have a weekly 
account—wiser, you know.” 

The grocer left without his money, but was offered in payment 
two Nocturnes, one the upright Valparaiso. Another story of the 
same grocer is that he arrived with his account as a grand piano was 
being carried in. Whistler said he was so busy he couldn’t attend to 
the matter just then, and the grocer thought if grand pianos were being 
bought, it must be all right. To a dealer in rugs Whistler would have 
given three Nocturnes in payment, but the dealer refused and spent 
the rest of his life regretting it. 

It was nothing unusual for bailiffs to be in possession, or for bills 
to cover the walls. The first time this happened, Whistler said to 
the people whom he invited to dine that they might know his house 
by the bills on it. When someone complained that creditors kept him 
walking up and down all night, Whistler was amused : 

“Dear me! Do as I do! Leave the walking up and down to the 
creditors ! ” 

Of the bailiffs he made a new feature at his breakfasts. Mrs. 
Lynedoch Moncrieff has told us of a Sunday when two or three men 
waited with Whistler’s servant, John, and she said to Whistler : 

“‘T am glad to see you’ve grown so wealthy.” 

“Ha, ha! Bailiffs! You know, I had to put them to some use! ” 

Mr. Rossetti and his wife once found the same “ liveried attendants.” 

““¢ Your servants seem to be extremely attentive, Mr. Whistler, 
and anxious to please you,’ one of the guests said. ‘ Oh yes,’ was his 
answer, ‘I assure you they wouldn’t leave me.’ ” 

Others remember a Sunday when the furniture was numbered 
for a sale. When breakfast was announced by a bailiff, Whistler said : 
“They are wonderful fellows. You will see how excellently they wait 
at table, and to-morrow, you know, if you want, you can see them sell 
the chairs you sit on every bit as well. Amazing.” 

Mrs. Edwin Edwards wrote us that when three men were in posses- 
sion, he treated them while his friends carted away his pictures out of 
the back door. Others say that the bailiffs, multiplied to seven, were 
invited into the garden, and given beer with a little something in it. 
No sooner had they tasted than down went their heads on the table 
round which they sat. People dining with Whistler that evening 
182 [1879 


BANKRUPTCY 


were taken into the garden to see the seven sleepers of Ephesus : “ Stick 
pins in them, shout in their ears—see—you can’t wake them!” All 
evening it rained and it rained, and it thundered, and it lightened, 
and it hailed. All night they slept. Morning came and they slept. 
But at the hour when he had given them their glass the day before, 
they all woke up and asked for more. 

One of the bailiffs at the end of a week, demanded his money. 
Whistler said : 7 | 

“Tf I could afford to keep you I would do without you.” 

“But what is to become of my wife and family if I don’t get my 
wages, sir?” 

“Ha ha! You must ask those who sent you here to answer that 
question.” 

“ Really, Mr. Whistler, sir, I need the money.” 

“Oh ho! Have a man in yourself.” 

Whistler said ‘‘ it was kind of them to see to such tedious affairs.” 
One he asked: ‘‘ And how long will you be ‘ the man in possession’ ? ” 

‘That, Mr. Whistler, sir, depends on your paying Mr. ree bills 

“¢ Awkward for me, but perhaps more for you! I hope you won’t 
mind it, though, you know, I fear your stay with me will be a lengthy 
one. However, you will find it not entirely unprofitable, for you will 
see and hear much that may be useful to you.” 

When things got more desperate, bills covered the front of the house, 
announcing the sale. Whistler, begging the bailiffs to be at home, 
went one night to dine. It was stormy, and, returning late, he found 
that the rain had washed the bills loose and they were flapping in 
the wind. He woke up the bailiffs, made them get a ladder, and 
paste every bill down again. He had allowed them to cover his house 
with their posters, but, so long as he lived in it, no man should sleep 
with it in a slovenly condition. 

Early in May 1879, Whistler was declared bankrupt. His liabilities 
were four thousand six hundred and forty-one pounds, nine shillings 
and three pence, and his assets, one thousand nine hundred and twenty- 
four pounds, nine shillings and four pence. In his long overcoat, 
longer than ever, swinging his cane lengthening in defiance, his hat 
set jauntily on his curls, he appeared in the City : 

“Ha ha! Well, you know, here I am in the City! Amazing! 
1879] 183 


James McNeitt WHISTLER 


You know, on the way, I dropped in to see George Lewis, being in 
the neighbourhood, and, you know, ha ha, he gave me a paper for you 
to sign! ” 

It was a petition in bankruptcy. 

The creditors met at the Inns of Court Hotel in June. Sir Thomas 
Sutherland was in the chair, and Leyland, the chief creditor, and various 
Chelsea tradesmen attended. The only novelty in the proceedings 
was a speech by Whistler on plutocrats, men with millions, and what 
he thought of them, and it was with difficulty he was called to order. 
A committee of examiners was appointed, composed of Leyland, Howell, 
and Thomas Way. 

Leyland was not let off by Whistler. As Michael Angelo, painting 
the walls of the Sistine Chapel, plunged the critic who had offended 
him into hell, so Whistler immortalised the man by whom he thought 
himself wronged. He painted three pictures. The first was The 
Loves of the Lobsters—an Arrangement in Rats, the most prominent 
lobster in the shirt-frills of Leyland. ‘“ Whom the gods wish to make 
ridiculous, they furnish with a frill!” he said, and the saying was 
repeated until it reached Leyland, as he meant it should. The second 
was Mount Ararat, Noah’s Ark on a hill, with little figures all in frills. 
The third was the Gold Scab—Eruption in Frilthy Lucre, a creature, 
breaking out in scabs of golden sovereigns, wearing the frill, seated 
on the White House playing the piano. The hideousness of the figure 
is more appalling because of the colour, the design. A malicious joke 
begun in anger, Mr, Arthur Symons has described it, from which 
“‘ beauty exudes like the scent of a poisonous flower.” Years after, 
when it was exhibited at the Goupil Gallery, one of the serious new 
critics regretted that Whistler allowed himself to be influenced by ~ 
Beardsley. These caricatures alone were in the studio when Leyland 
and the committee made the inventory. Augustus Hare wrote (May 13, 
1879) of a visit in the meantime : 

“‘ This morning I went with a very large party to Whistler’s studio. 
We were invited to see the pictures, but there was only one there, The 
Loves of the Lobsters. It was supposed to represent Niagara, and 
looked as if the artist had upset the inkstand, and left Providence to 
work out its own results. In the midst of the black chaos were two 
lobsters curveting opposite each other, and looking as if they were done 
184 [1879 


BANKRUPTCY 


with red sealing-wax. ‘I wonder you did not paint the lobsters 
making love before they were boiled,’ aptly observed a lady visitor. 
‘Oh, I never thought of that,’ said Whistler. It was a joke, I suppose. 
The little man, with his plume of white hair (‘the Whistler tuft ’ he 
calls it) waving on his forehead, frisked about the room, looking most 
strange and uncanny, and rather diverted himself over our disappoint- 
ment in coming so far and finding nothing to see. People admire 
like sheep his pictures in the Grosvenor Gallery, following each other’s 
lead because it is the fashion.” 

Worried as he was, Whistler sent to the Grosvenor of 1879 the 
Portrait of Miss Rosa Corder, Portrait of Miss Connie Gilchrist, 
The Pacific, Nocturne tin Blue and Gold, six etchings, two studies 
in chalk, and three pastels. His etching, Old Putney Bridge, 
was at the Royal Academy. The critics talked the usual nonsense, 
and have since repented it. Mr. (now Sir) Frederick Wedmore dis- 
tinguished himself by an article: Mr. Whistler’s Theories and Mr. 
Whistler’s Art, in the Nineteenth Century (August 1879), and after- 
wards reprinted in Four Masters of Etching (1883). He could ap- 
preciate Whistler’s work as little as he could understand Art and Art 
Critics, and from its wit was—and is—still smarting. Whistler he 
placed as: 

*‘ Long ago an artist of high promise. Now he is an artist often of 
agreeable, though sometimes of incomplete and seemingly wayward 
performance. ... That only the artist should write on art by con- 
tinued reiteration may convince the middle-class public that has little 
of the instinct of art. But, sirs, not so easily can you dispense with 
the services of Diderot and Ruskin.” 

Wedmore had apparently never heard of Cennini and Direr, 
Vasari and Cellini, Da Vinci and Reynolds and Fromentin, who 
remain, while Diderot and Ruskin and Wedmore himself are dis- 
credited or forgotten. He regretted that Whistler’s “ painted work 
is somewhat apt to be dependent on the innocent error that confuses 
the beginning with the end.” He condemned the Portrait of Henry 
Irving as a “ murky caricature of Velasquez,” the Carlyle as “ a doleful 
canvas.” The Nocturnes were “encouraging sketches,” with “ an 
effect of harmonious decoration, so that a dozen or so of them on the 
upper panels of a lofty chamber would afford even to the wallpapers 
1879] 185 


James McNeitt WuisTLeR 


of William Morris a welcome and justifiable alternative. ... They 
suffer cruelly when placed against work not, of course, of petty and 
mechanical finish, but of patient achievement. But they have a 
merit of their own, and I do not wish to understate it.” 

Whistler had ‘ never mastered the subtleties of accurate form ” ; 
“‘the interest of life—the interest of humanity ” had little occupied 
him, but Wedmore hoped that the career, begun with promise, “ might 
not close in work too obstinately faithful to eccentric error.” By his 
etchings his name might “ aspire to live,” though, “ for his fame, Mr. 
Whistler has etched too much, or at least has published too much,” 
though there is “‘ commonness and vulgarity ” in the figures in many 
prints, though he “ lacked the art, the patience, or the will to continue ” 
others. 

“‘ The future will forget his disastrous failures, to which in the 
present has somehow been accorded, through the activity of friendship, 
or the activity of enmity, a publicity rarely bestowed upon failures 
atrall:’’ 

In the same month and year, August 1879, an American, Mr. W. C. 
Brownell, published in Scribner’s Monthly an article on Whistler in 
Painting and Etching. He treated Whistler and his work with a serious- 
ness in “ significant ” contrast to Wedmore’s clumsy flippancy. This 
was the first intelligent American article in Whistler’s support, and it 
was illustrated by wood-engravings of his paintings and prints. Amidst 
the torrent of abuse, it came when Whistler most needed it. But it 
was not taken seriously, and much was made of Mr. Brownell’s slip in 
describing the dry-point Yo as a portrait of Whistler’s brother. 

Whistler, left homeless by his bankruptcy, revived the plan for the 
journey to Venice, and a series of etchings there. He suggested it to 
Ernest G. Brown, Messrs. Seeley’s representative when the Billings- 
gate was published in the Portfolio, and now with the Fine Art Society 
who, at his persuasion, had brought out four of the London plates 
this year: Free-Trade Wharf, Old Battersea Bridge, Old Putney Bridge, 
and The Little Putney, No. I. They liked the new scheme so well 
that they gave Whistler a commission for twelve plates in Venice to 
be delivered in three months’ time. One hundred proofs of each were ' 
to be printed, and he was to receive, we believe, twelve hundred pounds. 

By September 7 (1879), Whistler apparently in great spirits, though 
186 [1880 


BANKRUPTCY 


“ everything was to be sold up,” was “ arranging his route to Venice ” 
says Mr. Cole. From the receiver he had permission to destroy 
unfinished work. Copperplates were scratched and pictures smeared 
with glue, stripped off their stretchers and rolled up. Then he packed 
his trunk, wrote over his front door: “ Except the Lord build the 
house, they labour in vain that build it. E. W. Godwin, F.S.A., 
built this one,” and started for Venice. 

The White House was sold on September 18, 1879, to Mr. Harry 
Quilter, who paid for it two thousand seven hundred pounds in money 
at the time, and later in Whistler’s jeers. The public laughed at the. 
furniture and effects, “ at which even a broker’s man would turn up 
his nose. If ever the seamy side of a fashionable artist’s existence 
was shown, it was during that auction in Chelsea. ... Truly, if 
Ruskin had wished to have his revenge, he might have enjoyed it 
at the White House, when his prosecutor’s specially built-to-order 
abode was characterised as a disgrace to the neighbourhood by Philis- 
tinic spectators, and its contents supplied material for the rude jokes 
of Hebrew brokers and the special correspondent of the Echo.” 

“Two wooden spoons, a rusty knife handle and two empty oil 
tins,” was one of the lots. Rolls of canvases were carried off for a 
few shillings. Out of them came a Valparaiso, a Cremorne Gardens, 
the portrait of Sir Henry Cole, a White Girl and a Blue Girl, the portrait 
of Miss Florence Leyland, in such a condition that nothing now remains 
but the two blue pots of flowers on either side. The Cremorne Gardens, 
a few years after Whistler’s death, was sold by T. R. Way for twelve 
hundred pounds to Mr. A. H. Hannay. Then an effort was made to 
sell it, through London dealers, for almost four times the price to the 
Melbourne Gallery, where there were no Whistlers and where, therefore, 
those who had Whistler’s interests at heart thought it would not 
represent him worthily. Later on the painting was sold to the Metro- 
politan Museum, New York. It was first cleaned by T. R. Way, and 
when we saw it and had it photographed for the earlier edition of this 
book, it contained portraits of both Leyland and Whistler. It has 
since been cleaned again and the portraits have completely disappeared. 
Whether the Metropolitan is responsible for the vandalism we do not 
know. But we do know that it is this way history is wiped from the 
face of the earth by the restorer. Thomas Way, at the sale, bought 
1880] 187 


James McNe1itu WHisTLER 


The Lobsters and Mount Ararat. Other pictures went astray or dis- 
appeared temporarily, for a few intelligent people were at the sale. 
Whistler wrote to Mrs. William Whistler from Venice begging her to 
trace and find them, which she was unable to do. But they are turning 
up now. 

Whistler’s china, prints, and a few pictures were reserved for a sale 
at Sotheby’s, on Thursday, February 12, 1880. The title-page of the 
catalogue is: ‘‘In Liquidation. By order of the Trustees of F. A. 
McN. Whistler. Catalogue of the Decorative Porcelain, Cabinets, 
Paintings and other Works of Art of Ff. A. McN. Whistler. Received 
from the White House, Fulham, comprising Numerous Pieces of Blue and 
White China ; the Painting 1n O1l of Connie Gilchrist, Dancing with a 
Skipping-Rope, styled A Girl in Gold, by Whistler; A Satirical 
painting of a Gentleman, styled The Creditor, by Whistler. Crayon 
Drawings and Etchings, Cabinets, and Miscellaneous Articles.” When 
Leyland learned that the Gold Scab—The Creditor, was in the sale he 
did his best to have it removed. Dealers and amateurs were there: 
Way, Oscar Wilde, Huish, The Fine Art Society, Dowdeswell, Lord 
Redesdale, Deschamps, Wickham Flower, and Howell were purchasers. 
Howell secured the Japanese screen, the background of the Princesse du 
Pays de la Porcelaine. The Japanese bath fell to Mr. Jarvis. The 
Creditor was bought by Messrs. Dowdeswell for twelve guineas, vanished, 
turned up in the King’s Road, Chelsea, years later, and was purchased 
by Mr. G. P. Jacomb-Hood for ten pounds, and is now in the collection 
of Mrs. Spreckles in San Francisco. It is one of the documents Mr. 
Freer should have—and could have had—as he should have the 
Whistler with the brushes, the Mrs. Leyland, the Dr. Whistler, and 
others which would add enormously to the historic value as well as 
artistic completeness of his collection. Connie Gilchrist was sold to 
Mr. Wilkinson for fifty guineas. Whistler’s bust by Boehm was bought 
by Way for six guineas. A crayon sketch, catalogued as a portrait 
of Sarah Bernhardt, was knocked down for five guineas to Oscar Wilde, 
who asked her to sign it, which she did, writing that it was very like her. 
It might have been handed down as her portrait, had it not appeared 
at Oscar Wilde’s sale, and found its way back to Whistler, who declared 
that Madame Bernhardt never sat to him. The sale at Sotheby’s 
realised three hundred and twenty-eight pounds, nineteen shillings. 
188 [1880 


VENICE 


fae r eR XXII: VENICE. .THE YEARS EIGHTEEN 
SEVENTY-NINE AND EIGHTEEN EIGHTY. 


For years Whistler wanted to go to Venice. When he got there he 
found it a difficult place to work in. It was cold, and he felt the cold. 
It is almost impossible to hold a copperplate or a needle with numbed 
fingers, and Venice in ice made him long for London in fog. He would 
gladly have exchanged the Square of St. Mark’s for Piccadilly, a gondola 
fora hansom. Even Ruskin says this. 

Affairs in London worried him. He wrote for news of the vanished 
pictures. He knew that his letters had got into second-hand bookshops 
—even letters to his mother. He was ill and the Doctor was far away. 

Venice he thought beautiful, most beautiful after rain when, he 
wrote his mother, the colour and reflections were gorgeous. The 
Venetian masters interested him. At the Scuola di San Rocco he is 
remembered climbing up for a closer look at the Tintorettos. Veronese 
and Titian were great swells; Canaletto and Guardi, great masters. 
He went to St. Mark’s for Mass at Christmas, though he wrote that the 
ceiling of The Peacock Room was more splendid than the dome. But, 
as he told Fantin years before, it was a waste of time to search for 
new subjects, and all subjects were new to him in Venice. Countess 
Rucellai (Miss Edith Bronson) writes that “‘ he used to say Venice was an 
impossible place to sit down and sketch, ‘ there was something still 
better round the corner.’ ” 

Mr. Henry Woods says: ‘‘ He wandered for motives, but no matter 
how much he wandered, and appeared to loaf, when he found a subject 
he worked with a determination that no cold and cheerlessness could 
daunt. I remember his energy—and suffering—when doing those 
beautiful pastels, nearly all done during the coldest winter I have 
known in Venice, and mostly towards evening when the cold was 
bitterest ! He soon found out the beautiful quality of colour there is 
here before sunset in winter. He had a strong constitution. He was 
only unwell once with a bad cold.” 

The Fine Art Society asked him to make twelve plates in three 
months. The plates were not started for weeks, and the Fine Art 
Society demanded what he was doing. The answer was at first silence 
1880] 189 


James McNertt WHISTLER 


and then a request for more money. The Fine Art Society began to 
doubt and Whistler was furious. Then reports came that he was doing 
enormous plates they had not ordered. Howell and others said that 
Whistler would never come back, and Academicians laughed at the 
idea of the Society getting either plates or their money from such a 
“ charlatan.” With each new suggestion of doubt, Whistler’s fury grew. 
“‘ Amazing ‘their letters and mine, but, perhaps, not for the public.” 
The delay was his care. Even Frank Duveneck, most procrastinating 
of mortals, made his Venetian etchings, and Otto Bacher changed his 
style and did his Venetian plates, before Whistler found his subjects. 

It amused him to tell the American Consul that idleness is the virtue 
of the artist, but it was a virtue he denied himself. It was “ the same 
old story” he wrote his mother, “I am at my work the first thing 
at dawn and the last thing at night.” He could not stand the Venetian 
crowd, and he worked as much as possible out of windows. He did 
little from gondola or sandolo. To the tourist, a gondola is a thing of 
joy ; to the worker, it is a terrible, unstable studio, and even in the old 
days it cost a hundred francs a month, but then, the gondolier was 
your slave. 

He mostly left the monuments of Venice, as of London, alone. In 
London he preferred Battersea and Wapping to Westminster and St. 
Paul’s ; in Venice little canals and calli, doorways and gardens, beggars 
and bridges made a stronger appeal to him than churches and palaces. 
He deliberately avoided the motives of Guardi and Canaletto. To 
reproduce the masterpieces of the masters is, he said, an impertinence, 
and he found for himself “‘ a Venice in Venice.” 

Whistler, Mr. Howard Walker tells us, took a room in the Palazzo 
Rezzonico, where he would paint the sunset and then swear at the 
sun for setting. We know of no work done from the palace, though 
The Palaces which he etched are on the opposite side of the Grand 
Canal. Mr. Ross Turner remembers that he found Whistler in a small 
house with a small garden in front near the Frari, no doubt “ the 
quarters ” of which Otto Bacher speaks, and Mr. Turner remembers, 
too, that canvases were hanging on the wall, and a large one, with 
a big gondolier sketched on it, stood by the door. He was living 
then in the Rio San Barnaba, and there Maud came to join him. 
She could tell the whole story, but she will not. 

190 [1880 


VENICE 


Bacher says Whistler wore a “ large, wide-brimmed, soft, brown 
hat tilted far back, suggesting a brown halo. It was a background 
for his curly black hair and singular white lock. ... A dark sack- 
coat almost covered an extremely low turned-down collar, while a 
narrow black ribbon did service as a tie, the long, pennant-like ends 
of which, flapping about, now and then hit his single eyeglass.” 

Bacher describes him in evening dress without a tie, and Mr. Forbes 
recalls his coming without one to the Bronsons’, and Bronson saying it 
was sad to see artists so poor that they could not afford a necktie. 
Bacher also quotes Whistler as always substituting ‘‘ Whistler ” for 
“1” in his talk, which we never knew him to do and it seems little 
like him. 

Several of Duveneck’s pupils followed on from Florence in 1880, 
and they lived in the Casa Jankovitz, the house that juts out squarely 
at the lower end of the Riva degli Schiavoni, all Venice in front of it. 
Whistler was enchanted with the place when he went to see them, and 
moved there. He had one room, the windows looking over the Lagoon, 
and from them the etchings and pastels of the Riva and the Lagoon 
were made. Many things are told of this room, of plates bitten 
on the top of the bureau, the acid running down, and the scramble 
to save his shirts in the drawers beneath. Other stories are of the 
printing-press on which Canaletto’s plates may have been pulled and 
many of Duveneck’s and Bacher’s were; the press which used to work 
up to a certain point and then go with such a rush that it had to be 
stopped, for fear the bed would come out on the floor. 

There was a large colony of foreign artists and art lovers and a club, 
English in name, really cosmopolitan, in Venice, where Whistler met 
Rico, Wolkoff, Van Haanen, Tito, Blaas, if he had not already met them 
on the Piazza. Alexander, Rolshoven, De Camp, and Bacher were with 
Duveneck. Harper Pennington came in the autumn, and Scott, Ross 
Turner, Blum, Woods, Bunney, Jobbins, and Logsdail were amongst the 
other men he knew. The American Consul Grist, and the Vice-Consul 
Graham, were persons of importance, and the United States Consulate 
a meeting-place. Mrs. Bronson lived in Casa Alvisi, the Brownings 
and the Curtises had houses in Venice, and with all three families 
Whistler became intimate. Londoners turned up. Harry Quilter told 
of one encounter : 

1880] 191 


James McNertt WuIsTLER 


“In the spring of 1880 I spent a few weeks in Venice. I had been 
drawing for about five days, in one of the back canals, a specially beauti- 
ful doorway, when one morning I heard a sort of war-whoop, and there 
was Whistler, in a gondola, close by, shouting out as nearly as I can 
remember: ‘Hi, hi! What! What! Here, I say, you’ve got my 
doorway!’ ‘ Your doorway? Confound your doorway!’ I replied. 
‘It’s my doorway, I’ve been here for the last week.’ ‘I don’t care a 
straw, I found it out first. I got that grating put up.’ ‘ Very much 
obliged to you, I’m sure; it’s very nice. It was very good of you.’ 
And so for a few minutes we wrangled, but seeing that the canal was very 
narrow, and that there was no room for two gondolas to be moored 
in front of the chosen spot, mine being already tied up exactly opposite, 
I asked him if he would not come and work in my gondola. He did so, 
and, I am bound to say, turned the tables on me cleverly. For, pre- 
tending not to know who I was, he described me to myself, and recounted 
the iniquities of the art critic of the Times, one ‘ ’Arry Quilter.’ ” 

Everybody says Whistler was penniless in Venice, always borrowing, 
why, we do not know, unless the money went to pay for things in 
London. But there were dinners and Sunday breakfasts. Many 
were given in a little open-air trattoria, near the Via Garibaldi. The 
Panada, the noisiest of noisy restaurants, was one of his haunts, and 
there was another opposite the old post-office. The food, ‘ nothing 
but fowl,” he wrote, tired him so that he surprised himself by spending 
a fortune on tea, and carrying home strange pieces of fat, which he 
tried to fry into resemblance of the slices of bacon served by Mrs. 
Cossens, his Chelsea housekeeper. Mr. Scott says: 

“Tf Whistler could not lay a table, he knew how to turn out tasty 
little dishes over a spirit-lamp ; and it was not long before the inevitable 
Sunday breakfasts were instituted in that little room. Polenta a 
P Américaine, which he had induced the landlady to prepare under his 
direction, we used to eat with such sort of treacle, alias golden syrup, 
as could be obtained. Fish was cheaper and more plentiful then than 
now in the Water City, and the lanky serving-women could fry with 
the best of the famous Ciozzotte. The ‘ thin red wine’ of the country, 
in large flasks at about sixpence a quart, was plentiful, and these simple 
things, with the accompanying ‘ flow of soul’ made a feast for the 
gods. There was no room for many guests at one time, but Henry 
192 [1880 


VENICE 


Woods, Ruben, W. Graham, Butler, and Roussoff were often with 
us.” 

Days were spent on the Lido, and, doubtless he went to Chioggia, 
Murano, Burano, and Torcello. These little journeys were more 
costly and difficult then than now, and there are no plates except of 
_ the Lido and the Murano Glass-Furnace, and no pastels except one or 
two on the Lido. 

Whistler loved the nights at the never-closed clubs in the Piazza, 
Florian’s and the Quadri, or the Orientale on the Riva, where the coffee 
was just as good and two centessimi cheaper. Around these nights 
endless legends are growing, and like all the legends, they are such a 
part of Whistler they cannot be ignored. No one delighted in them 
more than he, no one ever told them so well. They became the 
favourite yarns of Duveneck’s boys, to which we listened many an 
evening when we came to Venice four years later. It was then we 
first heard of Wolkoff, or Roussoff as he is known in Bond Street, and 
his boast that he could make pastels like Whistler’s and the Americans’ 
bet of a champagne dinner that he couldn’t, and the evening in the 
Casa Jankovitz, when Rico, Duveneck, Curtis, Bacher, Woods, and 
Van Haanen recognised Wolkoff’s work and every time one of his 
pastels was produced cried: ‘* Take it away!” The Russian said to 
Whistler after dinner: ‘‘ You know, you scratch a Russian, and you 
find a Tartar!” ‘Ha ha!” said Whistler, “ I’ve scratched an artist 
and found an ama-Tartah!” Another story was of the tiny glass 
figure, or maybe a little black baby from the shrine of St. Anthony at 
Padua, dropped into Whistler’s glass of water at the café, where it looked 
like a little devil bobbing up and down, so that Whistler, when he saw it, 
thought something was wrong with his eyes, and sipped the water and 
shook the glass, and the more he sipped and shook the more the little 
devil danced, and finally he upset the glass over everybody, and the little 
demon fell in his lap. And there was another of the night when a 
barca, with a transparency showing Nocturnes and a band playing 
* Yankee-Doodle,”’ moved up and down the Grand Canal and along the 
Riva, never stopping until it was greeted with a loud “‘ Ha ha! ” from 
the darkness. And we heard of the day when Whistler, seeing Bunney 
on a scaffold struggling with St. Mark’s, his life-work for Ruskin, 
fastened a card, “I am totally blind,” to his coat-tail. And we were 
1880] N 193 


James McNeritt WHISTLER 


told of the hot noon when Whistler, leaning out of his window, dis- 
covering a bowl of goldfish below on the window-ledge of his landlady, 
against whom he had a grudge, let down a fishing-line, caught the fish, 
fried them, dropped them back into the bowl, and watched the return of 
their owner, who was sure her fish had been fried by the sun. And the 
story of Blum and Whistler, without a schet, crossing the Academy 
Bridge, Blum sticking in his eye a little watch with a split second-hand 
that went round so fast the keeper thought he had the evil eye, and they 
got over without paying; or of the boys’ farewell féte to Whistler in 
August when it was rumoured he was going, and in a coal barge, which 
Bacher transforms into a “ fairy-like floating bower festooned with the 
wealth of autumn,” a feast of melons and salads and Chianti was spread 
and eaten as they drifted up the Grand Canal with the tide, the lights of 
their lanterns bringing everyone to stare, until the rain drove them 
under the Rialto, where they spent the rest of the night, and then 
Whistler didn’t go after all. When Whistler left they say he asked the 
authors of these adventures up to his room and showed them a number 
of prints, and said, “‘ Now, you boys have been very good to me all 
this time and I want to do something for you,” and he turned over his 
prints carefully, and said, “I have thought it out,” and he took one, 
a spoiled one, and he counted their heads, and he cut it into as 
many pieces as there were people, and presented a fragment to 
each, and as they marched downstairs all they heard was “Ha 
ha!” These, and hundreds like them, are the legends you hear on 
the Piazza. 

Two friends of the Venetian days, Mr. Harper Pennington and Mr. 
Ralph Curtis, have sent us their impressions. Mr. Harper Pennington 
writes us: “‘ He gave me many lessons there in Venice. He would hook 
his arm in mine and take me off to look at some Nocturne that he was 
studying or memorising, and then he would show me how he went about 
to paint it—in the daytime. He let me—invited me, indeed, to stand 
at his elbow as he set down in colour some effect he loved from the 
natural things in front of us. What became of many such—small 
canvases, all of them—I do not know. The St. George Nocturne, Can- 
field has. Who owns The Fagade of San Marco? * 


* Mr. J. J. Cowan was for some years the owner, and he sold it to the French 
Gallery. 


194 [1880 


VENICE 


“There was an upright sunset, too, looking from my little terrace 
on the Riva degli Schiavoni over towards San Giorgio, and others that 
I saw him work on in 1880.” 

Mr. Curtis gives us other details: ‘‘ Shortly before his return to 
England with some of the etchings and the pastels, he gave his friends 
a tea-dinner. As seeing the best of his Venetian work was the real 
feast, the hour for the hors d’euvre, consisting of sardines, hard-boiled 
eggs, fruit, cigarettes, and excellent coffee prepared by the ever- 
admirable Maud, was arranged for six o’clock. Effective pauses 
succeeded the presentation of each masterpiece. During these 
entr actes Whistler amused his guests with witty conjectures as to the 
verdict of the grave critics in London on ‘these things.’ One of his 
favourite types for sarcasm used to be the eminently respectable 
Londoner who is ‘ always called at 8.30, closed-shaved at a quarter to 
9, and in the City at 10.2. ‘ What will he make of this? Serve him 
right too! Haha!’ 

“‘ Whistler was a constant and ever-welcome guest at Casa Alvisi, 
the hospitable house of Mrs. Bronson, whom he often called Santa 
Cattarina Seconda. During happy years, from lunch till long past 
bedtime, her house was the open rendezvous for the rich and poor, the 
famous and the famished, les rois en exil and the heirs-presumptive to 
the thrones of fame. Whistler there had his place, and he held the 
floor. One night a curious contrast was the great and genial Robert 
Browning commenting on the projected form of a famous ‘ Jimmy 
letter ’ to the World. 

* Very late, on hot scirocco nights, long after the concert crowd had 
dispersed, one little knot of men might often been seen in the deserted 
Piazza, sipping refreshment in front of Florian’s. You might be sure 
that was Whistler in white duck, praising France, abusing England, and 
thoroughly enjoying Italy. He was telling how he had seen painting 
in Paris revolutionised by innovators of powerful handling: Manet, 
Courbet, Vollon, Regnault, Carolus Duran. He felt far more enthu- 
siasm for the then recently resuscitated popularity of Velasquez and 
Hals. | | 

“The ars celare artem of Terborgh and Vermeer always delighted 
him—the mysterious technique, the discreet distinction of execution, 
the ‘ one skin all over it,’ of the minor masters of Holland was one of 
1880] 195 


James McNeitt WHISTLER 


his eloquent themes. To Whistler it was a treat when a Frenchman 
arrived in Venice. If he could not like his paint, he certainly enjoyed 
his language. French seemed to give him extra exhilaration. From 
beginning to end he owed much to the French for first recognising 
what he had learned from Japan.” 


CHAPTER XXII: VENICE. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN SEVENTY- 
NINE AND EIGHTEEN EIGHTY CONTINUED. 


Notuinc in Whistler’s life is more astonishing than the praise and 
blame raised by the Venetian pastels on their exhibition in London. 
Artists fought over them. To some, they were original, they gave 
the character of Venice; to others, they were cheap, anybody could 
do them. Both were wrong, as both always were. “ Anybody ” 
cannot do them; he had been making pastels: the subject, not the 
method, was new. Had some of the combatants visited the Academy 
at Venice, they might have discovered his inspiration in the drawings 
of the Old Masters, where he had found it years before at the Louvre. 
He was only carrying on tradition. 

Whistler used coloured paper for the pastels because it gave him, 
without any work, the foundation of his colour-scheme in the simplest 
manner, and because he could work straight away on it, and not 
ruin the surface and tire himself getting the tone. Bacher describes 
him in his gondola laden with pastels. But his materials were so few 
that he could wander on foot in the narrow streets, the best way to 
work as everyone who has worked in Venice knows. For it is difficult 
to find again a place, and impossible to see again the effect, that 
fascinated you. He carried only a little portfolio or drawing-board, 
some sheets of tinted paper, black chalk, half a dozen pastels, and 
varnished or silver-coated paper to cover the drawing when finished. 
Once he found what he wanted, he made a sketch in black chalk and 
then with pastel hinted the colour of the walls, the shutters, the spots 
of the women’s dresses, putting in the colour as in mosaic or stained 
glass between the black lines, never painting, but noting the right 
touch in the right place, keeping the colour pure. It looked so 
easy, “‘only the doing it was the difficulty,” he would say. When 
196 [1879-80 


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In the Chicago Art Institute 


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VENICE 


he finished the drawings he showed them. Mr. Scott recalls that 
“the latest pastels used to be brought out for inspection. Whistler 
would always show his sketches in his own way or not at all. In the 
absence of a proper easel and a proper light, they were usually laid on 
the floor.” 

The “ painter fellows” were startled by their brilliancy, Whistler 
told his mother, and he thought rather well of them himself. 

The pastels have been praised with the inconsequence charac- 
teristic of so much praise of his work. The drawing often is either 
not good in itself or so slight as to be of little importance. The beauty 
is in the suggestion of colour or the arrangement of line. Though 
he passed the spring, summer, winter, and part of two autumns in 
the city there is no attempt, save in a few sunsets, to give atmospheric 
effect, or the season, or the time of year. What he saw that pastel 
would do, what he made it do, was to record certain lines and to suggest 
certain colours. Critics and artists, having never studied pastel, were 
unaware of what had been done with it. The revival did not come 
for some years after Whistler showed his Venetian series, when there 
was a “ boom ” all over the world, and pastel societies were started, 
most of which have since collapsed. 

The “ boom ” in etching commenced years before Whistler went 
to Venice. There were standards: Whistler had already accom- 
plished great things, after a formula laid down by Diirer, Rembrandt, 
and Hollar. Therefore, when he made etchings which struck the 
uncritical, and even those who cared, as something new, the uncritical 
were shocked because their preconceived notions were upset, and those 
who cared were astonished. The difference between the Venetian 
and the London plates was so great that the two series might be attri- 
buted to two men. This was due partly to the difference between 
London and Venice seen by an artist sensitive to the character of 
places, but more to the difference of technique between the earlier 
and the later plates. Not so many years ago, talking to him about 
this subject, we said that the Venetian plates seemed to be done in 
a new way. It so happened that the 4dam and Eve—Old Chelsea 
and The Traghetto were, as they are now, hanging almost side by side 
on our walls. In five minutes he proved that one was the outgrowth 
of the other, and that there was a natural development from the 
1879-80] 197 


James McNertt WuisTLER 


beginning of his work. Until the London Memorial Exhibition it 
was impossible to trace this, because the prints had never been 
hung together chronologically, not even at the Grolier Club, in New 
York, where, for want of space, two separate shows were made. Before 
Whistler exhibited his Venetian plates most people knew nothing 
but the French Set and the Thames Set. The intermediate stages 
had not been followed, and the Venetian plates seemed a new thing. 
But the difference between them and the Thames series is one of 
development. Whistler always spoke of the Black Lion Wharf as 
boyish, though it is impossible to conceive of anything of its kind 
more complete. His estimate has been accepted by many. Mr. 
Bernhard Sickert, in writing of it, thinks it misleading to say that 
every tile, every beam has been drawn. “ These details are merely 
filled in with a certain number of strokes of a certain shape, accepted 
as indicating the materials of which they are constructed.” When 
an etching is in pure line and owes little to the printer, as in this case, 
it is the wonderful arrangement of lines, the wonderful lines them- 
selves, which make you feel that everything, every beam and every 
tile, has been drawn; that every detail actually has been drawn we did 
not suppose anybody would be so absurd as to imagine. The character 
of the lines gives you this impression, which is exactly what the artist 
wanted, and this is what proved Whistler an impressionist. Another 
critic has said that Whistler exhausted all his blacks on the houses. 
He did nothing of the sort. He concentrated them there, and did 
not take away from the interest of the wharf he was drawing by an 
equal elaboration in the boats, the barges, and the figures. As he 
learned more he gave up his literal, definite method. Instead of 
drawing the panes of a window in firm outline, he suggested them by 
drawing the shadows and the reflected lights with short strokes, and 
scarcely any outline. In the London plates he got the effect on his 
buildings by different bitings. In Venice he suggested the shadows. 
In both, the figures in movement are nearly the same, but there is 
a great advance in the drawing in the Venice plates, where they give the 
feeling of life. In the Millbank and the Lagoon, the subjects, or the 
dominating lines in the subjects, are the same, a series of posts carrying 
the eye from the foreground to the extreme distance, but their treatment 
in the Venetian plate, as well as the drawing of the figures, is more 
198 [1879-80 


VENICE 


expressive. Simplicity of expression has never been carried further. 
Probably the finest plate, in its simplicity and directness, is The Bridge. 
Whistler now obtained the quality of richness by suggesting detail, 
and also by printing. In The Traghetto there is the same scheme as 
in The Miser and The Kitchen, but the Venice plate is more painter- 
like. Without taking away from the etched line he has given a full- 
ness of tone which makes the background of The Burgomaster Six 
weak in comparison. And he knew this. 

He was doing his own printing for the first time to any extent. 
There were a hundred prints of the first Venice Set. All were not 
pulled by him, and the difference between his printing and Goulding’s, 
done after his death, is unmistakable. In the hand of any pro- 
fessional printer plates like The Traghetto and The Beggars would 
be a mass of scratches, though scratches of interest to the artist ; 
it required Whistler’s printing to bring out what he wanted. And 
it is the more surprising that he could print in Venice, so primitive 
was the press. Bacher had a portable press, but most was done on 
the old press. Whistler protested against the professional printer, 
his pot of treacle and his couches of ink. But no great artist ever 
carried the printing of etchings so far or made such use of printer’s 
ink as he did in these plates. Without the wash of ink, they would 
be ghosts, and he was justified in printing as he wanted to get what 
he wished. And he used ink in all sorts of ways on the same plate, 
he tried endless experiments with ever-varying results, even to cover 
up the weak lines of an indifferent design, as in Nocturne—Palaces, 
prized highly by collectors, but one of his poorest Venice plates. It, 
and The Garden, Nocturne—Shipping, and one or two besides are by 
no means equal to the others in line, though some of his prints of 
these are superb. But there are no such perfect plates in the world as 
The Beggars, The Traghetto, the two Rivas, The Bridge, and Rialto. 

While printing Whistler continually worked on his plates, and 
instead of there being—as the authorities say—half a dozen states 
there are a hundred; only the authorities cannot see. A curious 
fact about The Traghetto is that there were two plates. He was 
displeased with the first and etched it again. Bacher writes 
that The Traghetto “troubled him very much.” He pulled one 
fine proof and then overworked the plate so that he had to make 
1879-80] | 199 


JAMES McNeEritt WHISTLER 


a second. He got copper of the same size and thickness made 
by the Venetian from whom they had their plates. When this was 
ready, the first plate was inked with white paint instead of black ink. 
This was placed on the second varnished plate, and they were then 
run through the press. The result was “a replica in white upon the 
black etching ground.” Bacher says that on the new plate Whistler 
worked for days and weeks with the first proof before him, that he 
might find and etch only the original lines. When the second was 
printed Whistler placed the two proofs side by side and minutely 
compared them. And he was pleased, for the examination ended in the 
one song he allowed himself in Venice : 


“We don’t want to fight, 
But, by gingo ! if we do, 
We've got the ships, 
We've got the men, 
And got the money too-o0-00 !” 


The early proofs of other plates were unsatisfactory. Each proof 
was a trial, and, as each was pulled, he worked upon the plate, not 
generally taking out large slabs or putting in new passages to make 
a new state of it, but strengthening lines or lightening them, giving 
richness to a shadow or modelling to a little figure. It would be 
impossible, if the hundred proofs of each of these Venetian plates 
were not shown together, to say how much he did or what he did to 
each, but the first proof is quite different from the last and no two are 
alike. Some of them, from ghosts, became solid facts. 

In his Venice etchings Whistler also developed what he called the 
Japanese method of drawing, Bacher calls his secret, and Mr. Menpes 
the secret of drawing. Whistler always spoke frankly about it to us, 
from the first time J. saw him etching, and he followed the same 
method in his lithographs. In etching or lithography it is difficult 
to make corrections, the surface of the plate or the stone should not 
be disturbed, it is not easy, by the ordinary manner in which drawing 
is taught, to put a complicated design on the plate without elaborate 
spacing, tracing, or a preliminary sketch. Frequently, when the design 
is half made in the usual fashion, the artist finds that the point of greatest 
interest, the subject of his picture, will not come on the plate where 
200 [1879-80 


PORTRAIT OF SIR HENRY IRVING AS 
PEI eS La Obes EA IN 


ARRANGEMENT IN BLACK. NO. III 


OIL 


In the Metropolitan Museum, New York 
(See page 144) 


PORTRAIT OF SIR HENRY COLE 


OIL (DESTROYED) 


From a photograph lent by Pickford R. Waller, Esq. 
(See page 145) 


VENICE 


he wants it. The Japanese always seem to get the design in their 
colour-prints in the right place, and yet their technique adds to the 
difficulty of changing or altering a design, especially in their wood 
blocks. But whether this is because they have the method of drawing 
Whistler attributed to them, whether he got his idea from their com- 
pleted prints or evolved it, we do not know. We do know that the idea 
was his long before he painted the Japanese pictures. You can see 
the beginning of it in the Isle de la Cité. The system, scientific as 
all his systems were, is to select the exact spot on the canvas, the litho- 
graphic stone, the copper plate, or the piece of paper, where the focus 
of interest is to be, and to draw this part of the subject first. It 
might be near the side of a plate, though he insisted that the compo- 
sition should be placed well within the frame or on the plate, contrary 
as such treatment is to Japanese methods and his early practice. In 
the early paintings, sprays of flowers or branches of trees run into 
the picture to give the impression that it is carried beyond the frame, 
as the Japanese do. But his theory, perfected before the Venetian 
period and adhered to as long as he lived, was that everything should 
be well within the frame or plate mark, as far within as the subject 
was from him. Having selected the point of interest, he drew that, 
and drew it completely, and there, on his canvas, plate, or stone, was a 
picture. It might be a distant view of palaces or shipping beneath 
a bridge; in London, a shop window; in Paris, a dark doorway; in 
portraits, the sitter’s head. Once he put it down, he drew in the 
objects next in importance, all the while carrying out the work com- 
pletely and making one harmonious whole. The result was that the 
picture was finished—“ finished from the beginning ’—and there was 
on the plate, paper, or stone a space which he could fill with less 
important details or leave as he chose. With his painting it was a 
different problem. When the subject was arranged, it grew together 
all over, at the same time. In some of the earlier pictures, Old Battersea 
Bridge for example, a piece of canvas seems to have been added, though 
he maintained that the artist should confine himself to the size of 
the canvas he selected, and not get over his blunders, as many do, 
by adding to or taking from the canvas. All this requires the 
greatest care in just what Whistler considered most important, the 
placing of the subject. Working in this manner, always with the 
1879-80] 201 


James McNeitt WHIsTLER 


completed picture in his mind, he could return again, add further 
work if he thought it was needed, knowing he had his subject drawn. 
It sounds simple, so simple that one day, when he had been explaining 
it to Mr. E. A. Walton, and the latter said, ‘‘ But there is no secret ! ” 
Whistler’s answer was, “ Yes, the secret is in doing it.” It is just — 
this, ‘in doing it,” that the excellence of his work lies. As a matter 
of fact the difficulty is restraint in drawing the heart of a subject, 
while in painting still more restraint is necessary, the restraint imposed 
by colour and the medium. 

Besides etchings and pastels Whistler made water-colours in Venice, 
but as they were never shown together it is impossible to say how many. 
There were also a few oils. The most important is Nocturne, Blue 
and Gold, St. Mark’s. Bacher speaks of one from the windows of the 
Casa Jankovitz, “‘ the Salute and a great deal of sky and water, with 
the buildings very small,” and of a scene at night from a café near the 
Royal Gardens. Then there is the upright sunset from the Riva 
referred to by Mr. Pennington, and two others painted from Mr. 
Ross Turner’s terrace, one looking down the Riva to San Biagio, the 
other up to San Marco, both full of little figures, and with boats and 
a suggestion of the Lagoon, in the background; studies left hanging 
in sunlight after he had done one day’s work until he came to do the 
next. Mr. Forbes recalls a Nocturne of the Giudecca, with shipping, 
on a panel, which Whistler gave to Jobbins, who, as he told us, thought 
so little of it that he painted a sketch on the back and then sold it to 
Forbes, who still has it. Canfield was said to have another of S. 
Giorgio. Doubtless there are more, but we know of none that were 
exhibited. 


CHAPTER XXIII: BACK IN LONDON. THE YEARS 
EIGHTEEN EIGHTY AND EIGHTEEN EIGHTY-ONE. 


At the end of November 1880 Whistler was back in London. ‘“ Years 
of battle,” M. Duret calls the period that followed, and Whistler was 
ready to fight. . 

He arrived when the Fine Art Society had a show of “ Twelve 
Great Etchers,” a press was in the gallery, Goulding was printing, 


etching was upon the town. 
202 [1880 


Bacx 1n Lonpon 


“ Well, you know, I was just home; nobody had seen me, and 
I drove up in a hansom. Nobody expected me. In one hand I held 
my long cane; with the other I led by a ribbon a beautiful little white 
Pomeranian dog; it too had turned up suddenly. As I walked in 
I spoke to no one, but putting up my glass I looked at the prints on 
the wall. ‘Dear me! dear me!’ I said, ‘ still the same old sad work ! 
Dear me!’ And Haden was there, talking hard to Brown, and laying 
down the law, and as he said ‘ Rembrandt,’ I said ‘Ha ha!’ and he 
vanished, and then iv? 

He was without house or studio, and stopped in Wimpole Street 
with his brother until he took lodgings in Langham Street and then 
in Alderney Street. (The record of this is in the etching published 
in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, April 1881.) He set to work printing 
the plates, for few had been pulled in Venice. The Fine Art Society 
moved Goulding’s press upstairs and friends came to see him, and here 
Mr. Mortimer Menpes says he first met Whistler, and, dropping 
Poynter, South Kensington, and his ambition, threw himself at the 
feet of “the Master” and called himself pupil. It was not an ideal 
workshop, and the Fine Art Society took two rooms for Whistler in 
Air Street, Regent Street, on the first floor, with a bow window under 
the colonnade, now the Piccadilly Hotel: the window from which he 
etched the plate of the Quadrant. 

T. Way and his son came to Air Street to help Whistler print. 
The press was in the front room, and T. R. Way made a sketch of it 
in colour, his father damping paper, Whistler inking a plate, the press 
between them: an interesting document. The work was interrupted 
by excitement. One day Whistler placed on the heater a bottle of 
acid tightly stopped up. The stopper blew out, steaming acid fumes 
filled the room, and they ran for their lives. Another time, they took 
caustic potash, or something as deadly, to get the dried ink out of the 
lines of the plates, and they dropped the bottle on the floor, and there 
was not much left of the carpet. Why anything was left of the floor 
or of them is a mystery. Then, Mr. Menpes says: 

“Whistler drifted into a room in my house, which I had 
fitted up with printing materials, and it was in this little printing- 
room of mine that most of the series of Venetian etchings were 
printed.” | 
1880] 203 


James McNertt WuIsTLER 


The edition of a hundred sets was, however, not completed during 
Whistler’s lifetime. It was only after his death that Goulding finished 
the work. 

The first series of twelve Venetian plates was shown in December 
1880 at the Fine Art Society’s. The Twelve were selected from the 
forty plates Whistler brought back. The critics could see nothing 
in them. They were dismissed as “ another crop of Whistler’s little 
jokes.” One after another the people’s authorities repeated the 
Attorney-General’s decision that Whistler was amusing, and Burne- 
Jones’ regret that he had not fulfilled his early promise, and Whistler 
collected the criticisms for future use. 

Brown, of the Fine Art Society, took to New York a set of me 
proofs. Whistler spent a Sunday pulling them. But the etchings 
were no more appreciated in New York than in London. Only eight 
sets were ordered. 

In the meanwhile Whistler was preparing his exhibition of pastels. 
Mr. Cole notes in his diary : 

“Fanuary 2 (1881). Jimmy called, as self-reliant and sure as 
ever, full of confidence in the superlative merit of his pastels, which 
we are to go and see.” 

This exhibition also was held at the Fine Art Society’s. Whistler 
designed the frames ; he wrote the catalogue, which had the brown paper 
cover, but not quite the form eventually adopted, and it was printed 
by Way ; he decorated the gallery, an arrangement in gold and brown, 
which was enjoyed as another of his little jokes by the critics. 
Godwin was one of the few who admitted the beauty, and his description 
in the British Architect (February 1881) is on record: 

“First, a low skirting of yellow gold, then a high dado of dull 
yellow-green cloth, then a moulding of green gold, and then a frieze 
and ceiling of pale reddish brown. The frames are arranged on the 
line; but here and there one is placed over another. Most of the 
frames and mounts are of rich yellow gold, but a dozen out of 
the fifty-three are in green gold, dotted about with a view of decora- 
tion, and eminently successful in attaining it.” 

On the evening of the Press view Mr. Cole says : 

“ Fanuary 28 (1881). Whistler turned up for dinner very full of 
his private view to-morrow. Later on, we concocted a letter inviting 
204 [1880-1881 


Back 1n Lonpon 


Prince Teck to come to it. His last draft was all right, but he 
would insist on beginning it ‘ Prince,’ although I assured him ‘ Sir’ 
was the usual way of addressing him in a letter.” 

The private view (January 29) was a crush, Bond Street blocked 
with carriages, the sidewalk crowded ; nothing like it was ever known 
at the Fine Art Society’s. Millais, showing forgotten machines in 
the adjoining room, was one of the first to see the pastels. ‘“‘ Magni- 
ficent, fine; very cheeky, but fine!” he bellowed, and afterwards 
said so to Whistler, who was pleased. The crowd did not know what 
to say, and, had they known, would have been afraid to say it. For 
Whistler was there, his laugh louder, shriller than ever. He let no 
one forget the trial. An admirer asked the price of a pastel: “ Sixty 
guineas! That’s enormous!” Whistler heard, though he was not 
meant to; he heard everything. “Haha! Enormous! Why, not 
at all! I can assure you it took me quite half an hour to do it!” 

People laughed at Whistler’s work, because they thought they were 
expected to. Because he was the gayest man they refused to see 
that he was the most serious artist. When they laughed at his art, 
it hurt; when they laughed at him, they suffered; and he had his 
revenge in mystifying them : 

“Well, you know, they thought it was an amiability to me for them 
to be amused. One day, when I was on my way to the Fine Art 
Society’s, while the show was going on, I met Sir and Lady 
face to face, at the door, as they were coming out. Both looked very 
much bored, but they couldn’t escape me. So the old man grasped 
my hand and chuckled, ‘ We have just been looking at your things, 
and have been so much amused!’ He had an idea that the drawings 
on the wall were drolleries of some sort, though he could not under- 
stand why, and that it was his duty to be amused. I laughed with 
him. I always did with people of that kind, and then they said I was 
not serious.” 

The critics, too, laughed, but there was venom in their laughter. 
They liked to take themselves, if they couldn’t take Whistler, seriously, 
and they hated work they could not understand. The pastels were 
sensational, Whistler was clever with a sort of transatlantic impudence. 
They objected: to the brown paper, to the technique, to the frames, 
to the decorations, to the subjects; they became unexpectedly con- 
1881] 205 


James McNeitt WHISTLER 


cerned for the past glory of Venice. Godwin, again, was an exception. 
** No one who has listened, as the writer of these notes has, to Whistler’s 
descriptions of the open-arcaded, winding staircase that lifts its tall 
stem far into the blue sky, or of the facades, yet unrestored, that speak 
of the power of the Venetian architect, can doubt that he who can so re- 
member and describe has failed to admire. It is by reason of the strength 
of this admiration and appreciation that he holds back in reverence, 
and exercises this reticence of the pencil, the needle, and the brush.” 

A number of people showed their belief in the pastels by buying 
them, and the exhibition was a success financially. The prices ranged 
from twenty to sixty guineas, the total receipts amounted to eighteen 
hundred pounds. Bacher quotes a letter written to him just after the 
show opened signed “‘ Maud Whistler”: “The best of it is, all the 
pastels are selling. Four hundred pounds’ worth the first day; now 
over a thousand pounds’ worth are sold.” 

Before the show closed, at the end of January, Whistler was 
summoned to Hastings. His mother had been there since her illness 
of 1876-77, from which she never entirely recovered, though there 
were intervals between the attacks when her family had no cause for 
anxiety. But her death was sudden. Those who refused to see in 
Whistler any other good quality could not deny his devotion to his 
mother ; those to whom he revealed the tenderness under the defiant 
masque with which he faced the world knew what his love for her 
meant to him. She had lived with him whenever it was possible. 
His visits and letters to Hastings had been frequent. He never forgot 
her birthday. He told her of all his success, all his hopes, and made 
as light as he could of his debts and disappointments. But in the 
miserable week before the funeral at Hastings he was full of remorse ; 
he should have been kinder and more considerate, he said; he had not 
written often enough from Venice. Dr. Whistler was with him part 
of the time, and the Doctor’s wife the rest. In the afternoons they 
wandered on the windy cliffs above the town, and there was one drear 
afternoon when he broke down : “ It would have been better had I been 
a parson as she wanted!” Yet he had nothing to reproach himself with. 
The days in Chelsea were for her as happy as for him, and she whose 
pride had been in his first childish promise at St. Petersburg lived to see 
the development of his powers. She is buried at Hastings. 

206 [1881 


Back 1n Lonpon 


It was fortunate that when he got back to town there were events 
to distract his thoughts. The Society of Painter-Etchers opened 
their first exhibition in April at the Hanover Gallery. American 
artists who were just starting etching and had never shown prints in 
London were invited. Frank Duveneck sent a series of Venetian 
proofs. This was the occasion of “ the storm in an esthetic teapot,” 
which, had not Whistler thought it important as “ history,” would 
be forgotten. We quote, as he did, from The Cuckoo (April 11, 
1881) : 

‘Some etchings, exceedingly like Mr. Whistler’s in manner, but 
signed ‘ Frank Duveneck,’ were sent to the Painter-Etchers’ Exhibition 
from Venice. The Painter-Etchers appear to have suspected for a 
moment that the works were really Mr. Whistler’s, and, not desiring 
to be the victims of an easy hoax on the part of that gentleman, three 
of their members—Dr. Seymour Haden, Dr. Hamilton, and Legros 
—went to the Fine Art Society’s Gallery in Bond Street, and asked 
one of the assistants there to show them some of Mr. Whistler’s Vene- 
tian plates. From this assistant they learned that Mr. Whistler was 
under an arrangement to exhibit and sell his Venetian etchings only 
at the Fine Art Society’s Gallery.” 

Whistler heard of this. He called on Mr. Cole, “ highly incensed 
with Haden and Legros conspiring to make out he was breaking his 
contract with the Fine Art Society,” and went at once to the Hanover 
Gallery, Mr. Menpes with him. The three members fortunately 
were not there. Then Haden wrote to the Fine Art Society that they 
had found out about Mr. Duveneck and said they were delighted 
with his etchings, and expressed regret. But it is incredible that 
Haden and Legros should have mistaken the work of Duveneck for 
that of Whistler. The story was published by Whistler in Lhe Prker 
Papers. With its interest a little dulled by time, the correspondence 
may be read in The Gentle Art. 

Whistler had not forgotten the pictures left with Graves in 
Pall Mall. By degrees he bought them back. When Mr. Algernon 
Graves consulted his father about letting Whistler have the pictures 
upon which the full amount was not paid, after Whistler had repaid 
a hundred pounds for three, the father said, ‘‘ Let him take the whole 
lot, and don’t be a fool; the pictures aren’t worth twenty-five pounds 
1881] 207 


JAMEs McNeEiLLt WHISTLER 


apiece.” The Rosa Corder was sold at Christie’s with Howell’s effects, 
Mr. Algernon Graves agreeing that, if it brought more than Howell’s 
debt to the firm, Howell’s executors could have the balance. The 
father maintained the picture wouldn’t fetch ten pounds, but it brought 
more than the amount of their bill, some hundred and thirty pounds. 
The Irving was sold to Sir Henry for a hundred pounds—at Irving’s 
sale it was bought by Mr. Thomas of Philadelphia for five thousand 
guineas—and the Miss Franklin went to Messrs. Dowdeswell. Whistler 
continued to pay his bills regularly as they came due, to Graves’ 
astonishment ; there was only one exception, and then Whistler came 
to ask to have the payment postponed, and this was not settled until 
long after the pictures were in Whistler’s possession. When Whistler 
paid the final instalment Graves expressed his surprise. But Whistler 
said: ‘ You have been a very good friend to me; in fact, you have 
been my banker. You have acted honourably to me in the whole 
matter. I meant to pay, and I have done so.” 

These business details and his exhibitions left Whistler no time 
in 1881 for the Salon, where he had nothing, or for the Grosvenor, to 
which he sent only Mzss Alexander. In the autumn, borrowing the 
Mother from Graves, he lent it to the Academy in Philadelphia, the 
arrangements being made by Mrs. Anna Lea Merritt, and this is 
her account : 

‘In the autumn of 1881 I was asked by the Pennsylvania Academy 
of Fine Arts to receive pictures by American artists, and have them 
forwarded for exhibition, and especially they entreated me to persuade 
Mr. Whistler to send a picture. He had never been represented in 
any American exhibition. I obtained a chance when meeting him 
at a dinner of pressing the subject more vigorously than I could have 
done by writing, and he promised to send his mother’s portrait. It 
was collected in due course and deposited in my studio, then in the 
Avenue. Mr. Whistler came immediately after, and as the canvas 
was breaking away from the stretcher, he directed the packing agents, 
who were skilful frame-makers, to restrain it, and then left me. As 
soon as the canvas was made tight, spots of crushed varnish appeared 
on the surface. The varnish, in fact, broke or crumbled and I feared 
the canvas might have broken. I flew down the street, overtook him, 
and brought him back, dreading that he would blame us and even 
208 [1881-2 


PORTRAIT OF MISS ROSA CORDER 
ARRANGEMENT IN BLACK AND BROWN 


OIL 


In the possession of H, C. Frick, Esq. ° 
(See page 146) 


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It POAC Si ARTF 
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THE PEACOCK ROOM 


Photograph of the room at Prince’s Gate, showing the Princesse du Pays de la Porcela 


lace 


tne in p 


Now in the National Gallery of American Art, Washington 


(See page 147) 


+ 


“ 


Back 1n Lonpon 


that some injury had been done. To my surprise, he took the mis- 
fortune with perfect composure and kindness, and stippled the spots 
with some solvent varnish that soon restored the even surface. And 
there was never a word of suggestion that we had done any harm. 
Of course, I knew the fault was not in anything that had been done, 
and it was by his own order, but from all I had heard about him I 
trembled. The greatest difficulty in connection with that exhibition 
was to persuade him to journey to the American Consulate in St. Helen’s 
Place and make his affidavit for the invoice. It had to be done by 
himself ; and it was not pleasant, as we know, to waste a day, the very 
middle of the day, in this dull declaration of American citizen 
sojourning in England. After the cases were ready for shipment there 
was still delay to get his task accomplished, and I think the 
Pennsylvania Academy hardly guess how much persuading it took. 
What a pity they did not secure the beautiful picture for his own 
country! Now that it hangs in the Luxembourg, they envy it.” 

The Mother was exhibited at the Pennysylvania Academy in 1881, 
and, on the suggestion of Mr. Alden Weir, at the Society of American 
Artists in New York in 1882, and it could have been bought for a 
thousand dollars. Although nobody wanted it, it made him known 
in his own country as a painter. He was elected a member of the 
Society of American Artists that year. 

At this time, owing to the visit of Seymour Haden to the United 
States, American artists became interested in etching, and societies 
were formed and exhibitions held all over the country. There was 
a show in the Boston Museum in 1881. Another, the first of a series, 
was given by the New York Etching Club in 1882. And the Phila- 
delphia Society of Etchers organised in the same year an International 
Exhibition at the Academy of Fine Arts. Articles in Scribner’s on 
Whistler and Haden and American Etchers added to the interest. 
Messrs. Cassell and others issued portfolios of prints, and every painter 
became an etcher. The result was a boom, then a slump, out of which 
Whistler and Haden almost alone emerged, for the reason that their 
work was not done to please the public or the publishers. We remember 
the excitement made by Haden’s lectures which prepared America for 
Whistler, whose prints were in both the New York and Philadelphia 
Exhibitions. Mr. James L. Claghorn, almost the only Philadelphian 
1881-2] fe) 209 


James McNeitt WuisTLeR 


who then cared for etchings, had already many Whistlers. Mr. Avery, 
in New York, had some years before begun his collection and secured for 
it many of the rarest proofs, and he was followed by Mr. Howard Mans- 
field, who later on interested Mr. Charles L. Freer. But in America 
more had been heard of Whistler’s eccentricities than his work. It could 
no longer remain unknown, once his etchings and the portrait of the 
Mother were seen and The White Girl was lent to the Metropolitan 
Museum in New York, where it hung for some time. And the young 
men who had been with him in Venice, coming back, spread his fame 
at home, and when Americans got to know his work they became 
the keenest to possess it. Even at this time Avery owned the Whistler 
in the Big Hat, Mr. Whittemore The White Girl, and Mrs. Hutton 
the Wapping. That an American artist’s works should be bought at 
all by Americans at that date was extraordinary. Tadema, Bouguereau, 
Meyer von Bremen were the standard, soon, however, to be 
exchanged for Whistler, the Impressionists, and the Dutch and 
Barbizon Schools. 


CHAPTER XXIV: THE JOY OF LIFE. THE YEARS EIGH- 
TEEN EIGHTY-ONE TO EIGHTEEN EIGHTY-FOUR. 


On May 26, 1881, Mr. Cole “ met Jimmie, who is taking a new studio 
in Tite Street, where he is going to paint all the fashionables; views 
of crowds competing for sittings ; carriages along the streets.” 

It was No. 13, close to the White House. Whistler decorated it 
in yellow: one “ felt in it as if standing inside an egg,” Howell said. 
He again picked up blue and white, and old silver ; he again gave Sunday 
breakfasts, and they again became the talk of the town and he the 
fashion. If the town was determined to talk, Whistler was willing 
it should. He was never so malicious, never so extravagant, never 
so joyous. He wrapped himself “in a species of misunderstanding.” 
He filled the papers with letters. London echoed with his laugh. 
His white lock stood up defiantly above his curls ; his cane lengthened ; 
a series of collars sprang from his long overcoat; his hat had a curlier 
brim, a lower tilt over his eyes; he invented amazing costumes : 
“in great form, with a new fawn-coloured long-skirted frock-coat, 
210 [1881 


Tue Joy or Lire 


and extraordinary long cane,” Mr. Cole found him one summer day 
in 1882. He was known to pay calls with the long bamboo stick in 
his hand and pink bows on his shoes. He allowed no break in the 
gossip. The carriages brought crowds, but not sitters. Few would 
sit to him before the trial; after it there were fewer. In the seventies 
it needed courage to be painted by Whistler; now it was to risk 
notoriety and ridicule. Lady Meux was the first to give him a com- 
mission. Two of his three large full-lengths of her are amongst his 
most distinguished portraits. She was handsome, of a luxuriant 
type, her full-blown beauty a contrast to the elusive loveliness of 
Maud in the Fur Jacket, or Mrs. Leyland, or Mrs. Huth. Whistler 
found appropriate harmonies. One was an Arrangement in White and 
Black. There is a sumptuousness in the velvet gown and the long 
cloak he never surpassed, and the firm modelling of the face, neck, 
and arms gives to the regal figure more solidity than he ever got before. 
Whistler was pleased with it, spoke of it as his ‘‘ beautiful Black Lady,” 
and Lady Meux was so well pleased that she posed a second time. 
In this, the Harmony in Flesh Colour and Pink, afterwards changed to 
Pink and Grey, she wears a round hat low over her face, and a pink 
bodice and skirt, and stands against a pink background, and the ugly 
fashion of the day cannot conceal the beauty. The third portrait, 
as far as we can find out, was never finished. Mr. Walter Dowdeswell 
has a pen-and-ink drawing of it. She wears a fur cap, a sable coat, 
and carries a muff. For this, it is said, after differences, a maid 
posed and Whistler painted her face over the Lady’s. Mr. Harper 
Pennington says: “‘ The only time I saw Jimmy stumped for a reply was 
at a sitting of Lady Meux (for the portrait in sables). For some reason 
Jimmy became nervous, exasperated, and impertinent. Touched by 
something he had said, her ladyship turned softly towards him and 
remarked, quite softly, ‘See here, Jimmy Whistler! You keep a civil 
tongue in that head of yours, or I will have in some one to finish those 
portraits you have made of me!’ with the faintest emphasis on ‘ finish.’ 
Jimmy fairly danced with rage. He came up to Lady Meux, his 
long brush tightly grasped, and actually quivering in his hand, held 
tight against his side. He stammered, spluttered, and finally gasped 
out, ‘How dare you? How dare you?’ but that, after all, was not 
an answer, was it? Lady Meux did not sit again. Jimmy never 
1882] 211 


James McNett WuisTLER 


spoke of the incident afterwards, and I was sorry to have witnessed 
hee ‘ 

At the time of the London Memorial Exhibition Lady Meux 
offered the Committee the two portraits in her possession on condition 
that the third should be returned to her. This the Committee were 
unable to do, and it was not until her will was published after her death, 
in January 1911, in which she bequeathed the missing picture and the 
correspondence relating to it to the National Gallery, that any more 
was heard about it. Then a statement appeared in a New York 
paper that the portrait was in the collection of Mr. Freer, and Miss 
Birnie Philip stated in the Times that Whistler had destroyed the 
picture which, according to Lady Meux in her will, “ was ordered and 
paid for by her husband, but it had never come into his possession nor 
could it be found.” 

Sir Henry Cole posed for a second portrait and Whistler got back 
from Mr. Way the first, discovered in one of the rolls of canvases he 
bought at the sale. Mr. Cole saw the second portrait in the studio: 

“« February 26 (1882). Found his commencement of my father, 
good but slight, full length, evening clothes, long dark cloak thrown 
back, red ribbon of Bath.” 

“ April 17 (1882). In spite of his illness, my father to Whistler’s, 
who fretted him by not painting; my father thought that Jimmy 
had merely touched the light on his shoes, and nothing else, although 
he stood and sat for over an hour and a half.” 

This was the last sitting. The next day Sir Henry Cole died 
suddenly: a distinguished official lost to England, a friend lost to 
Whistler. Eldon, an artist much with Whistler at the time, was in 
the studio on the 17th, and recalled afterwards that Sir Henry Cole’s 
last words on leaving were, “‘ Death waits for no man!” Whistler 
meant to go on with the portrait. On May 2 Mr. Cole went again 
to Tite Street: “ After a long delay, Jimmy showed me his painting 
of my father, which J. can make into a very good thing.” 

It is said not to have been finished, but we possess a photograph 
of it which shows no want of finish. This also, Mr. Cole was informed, | 
Whistler destroyed. Neither was a full-length of Eldon finished : 
a fine thing, to judge from the photograph we have seen. It also has 
vanished, though a small half-length, sent to the London Memorial 
212 [1882 


Tue Joy or Lire 


Exhibition, but not hung—it may be a copy—is now in New York. 
During the next few years other portraits were begun, and of several 
we have photographs which it is not possible to identify. An Arrange- 
ment in Yellow was of Mrs. Langtry. For a new version of his scheme 
of “blue upon blue”? Miss Maud Waller posed. Mrs. Marzetti, her 
sister, who went with her to the studio, writes : 

“The sittings commenced in the early part of 1882. We went 
two or three times, and then Whistler painted the face out, as it was 
not to his liking, although most people thought it excellent. In those 
days Maud was very beautiful. The picture was started on a canvas 
that already had a figure on it, and it was turned upside down, and 
the Blue Girl’s head painted in between the legs. The dress was made 
by Mme. Alias, the theatrical costumier, to Whistler’s design, and 
I believe cost a good deal. In the end the picture was finished from 
another model (I do not know who), and was hung in one of Whistler’s 
exhibitions in Bond Street [Notes, Harmonies, Nocturnes, May 
1884, at Dowdeswell’s]: it is No. 31 in the catalogue, and called 
Scherzo in Blue—The Blue Girl. This was the same exhibition in 
which he hung the picture he gave me, and which in the end IJ never 
got (No. 66, Bravura in Brown). I should have treasured it for two 
reasons: Whistler’s painting, and also that it was a portrait of Mr. 
Ridley. The picture of Maud was to have been at the Grosvenor 
Gallery, but was not finished. However, it was sent in for the 
private view, and taken away again the same night or next morning. 
We used thoroughly to enjoy our visits to the studio—that is to say, I 
did, because I sat and looked on. I can’t say whether Maud enjoyed 
them as much; probably not, as we used to get down there about 
eleven o’clock, have lunch, and stay all the afternoon, most of which 
time she was standing. 

*¢ IT cannot remember all the callers we used to see there, as there 
were so many, but some of the more frequent visitors I remember 
well. There was one man who was always there, all day long, and we 
just hated him; I don’t know why, as he seemed very harmless. He 
was Whistler’s shadow. I don’t know who he was, but have an idea 
that he used to write a bit. I think he was very poor, and that Whistler 
pretty well kept him. I heard some few years ago that he died in a 
lunatic asylum. Oscar Wilde was a frequent visitor, also Walter Sickert. 
1882] 2X3 


James McNett WuistLEeR 


Whistler used to say, ‘Nice boy, Walter!’ he was very fond of him 
then. Others I remember were two brothers named Story, Frank Miles 
(who had a studio just opposite Whistler’s)—Renée Rodd as Whistler 
used to call him—Major Templar, Lady Archie Campbell, and Mrs. 
Hungerford. Whistler was just finishing the portrait of Lady Meux, 
and I stood for him one day for about five minutes. It was a full- 
length portrait in black evening dress, with a big white cloak over 
the shoulders. 

“Whistler was a most entertaining companion; he was very 
fond of telling us Edgar Allan Poe’s stories, and also of reciting The 
Lost Lenore, which he said was his favourite poem. He dined with us 
several times in Lyall Street ; he was always late for dinner, sometimes 
half an hour, and I think on more than one occasion was sound asleep 
at the table before the end of the dinner. 

** Whistler’s usual breakfast, which he often had after we arrived 
at the studio, was two eggs in a tumbler, beaten up with pepper, salt, 
and vinegar, bread and coffee. ... 

“Whistler stood yards away from the picture with his brush, and 
would move it as though he were painting ; he would then jump across 
the room, and put a dab of paint on the canvas; he also used to wet 
his finger and gently rub portions of his picture. I have often seen 
him take a sponge with soap and water and wash the Blue Girl’s face 
(on the canvas, I mean).” 

Lady Archibald Campbell, also posing for Whistler, said: “ He 
was a great friend of ours. I think I sat to him during a year 
or so, off and on, for a great many studies in different costumes and 
poses. His first idea was to paint me in court dress. The dress was 
black velvet, the train was silver satin with the Argyll arms embroidered 
in appliqué in their proper colours. He made a sketch of me in the 
dress. The fatigue of standing with the train was too great, and he 
abandoned the idea. In all these studies he called my attention to 
his method of placing his subject well within the frame, explaining 
that a portrait must be more than a portrait, must be of value decora- 
tively. He never patched up defects, but, if dissatisfied with any 
portion of his work, covered the canvas afresh with his first impression 
freshly recorded. The first impression thrown on the canvas he often 
put away, often destroyed. Among others, he made in oils an 
214 [1882 


THE Joy or Lirr 


impression of me as Orlando, in the forest scene of 4s You Like It, 
at Coombe. He considered this successful. A picture he called The 
Grey Lady was a harmony in silver greys. I remember thinking it a 
masterpiece of drawing, giving the impression of movement. I was 
descending a stair, the canvas was of a great height, and the general 
effect striking. It was almost completed when my absence from 
town prevented a continuance of the sittings. When I returned 
he asked to make a study of me in the dress in which I called upon 
him. This is the picture which he exhibited under the name of The 
Brodequin Faune, or The Yellow Buskin. As far as I remember it was 
painted in a few sittings. When I saw him shortly before his death 
I asked after The Grey Lady. He laughed and said he had destroyed 
mer,” 

Mr. Walter Sickert has recorded a number of interesting details 
about these pictures, though his statements are vague. He says that 
the canvases had a grey ground “ made with black and white mixed 
with turpentine,” and that Whistler used a medium of oil and turpen- 
tine, and “covered thinly the whole canvas with his prepared tones, 
using house-painters’ brushes for the surfaces, and drawing lines with 
round hogshair brushes nearly a yard long. . . . His object was to 
cover the whole canvas at one painting—either the first or the hun- 
dredth.” Lady Archibald asked him if he was going to touch up her 
portrait at the last sitting. Whistler said, ‘ Not touch it up, give it 
another beautiful skin.” Mr. Sickert also very aptly suggests the reason 
why some of the portraits were never completed. Whistler did them 
all over, again and again, till they were “ finished—or wrecked, as 
often happened, from the sitter getting tired, or growing up, or growing 
old.” Almost the only new fact in Mr. Frank Rutter’s Whistler is 
given him by Mr. Sickert, who says he remembers once Whistler stand- 
ing on a chair with a candle at the end of a sitting from Lady Archibald 
Campbell, looking at his work, but undecided whether he should take 
it out or leave it. They started to dinner, and in the street he decided, 
saying, “‘ You go back. I shall only be nervous and begin to doubt 
again. Go back and take it all out.” This, Mr. Sickert says he did, 
with a rag and benzoline. 

M. Duret suggests that the ridicule of her friends had an effect 
on Lady Archibald Campbell, or perhaps her beauty made her critical ; 
1882] 21% 


JAMEs McNeitLt WHISTLER 


anyhow, she suggested changes to Whistler, who, though he seldom 
accepted suggestions from his sitters, did his best to meet her, until 
it seemed as if, to please her, he must repaint the picture, and he was 
discouraged. We have heard of a scene outside the studio: Lady 
Archibald in a hansom on the point of driving away never to return ; 
M. Duret springing on the step and representing the loss to the world 
of the masterpiece, and arguing so well that she came back, and The 
Yellow Buskin was saved from the fate of The Grey Lady and The Lady 
in Court Dress. Some think the portrait that was finished is Whistler’s 
greatest. It has distinction and character. It is another Arrangement 
in Black in which critics could then discover but dinginess and dirt. One 
wit described it as a portrait of a lady pursuing the last train through 
the smoke of the Underground. People have learned to see, or at 
least to think they should see, beauty, and to-day they hardly dare deny 
it is a masterpiece. Whistler called it first the Portrait of Lady Archt- 
bald Campbell, but afterwards The Yellow Buskin, the title in the 
Wilstach Collection, Philadelphia, where it now hangs. 

Mr. Walter Sickert tells an amusing story of Whistler’s way some- 
times of meeting the suggestions of sitters : 

‘“‘T remember an occasion when Whistler, yielding to persuasion, 
allowed himself to introduce, step by step, certain modifications in 
the scheme of the portrait that he was painting. As time went on he 
saw his own conception overlaid with an image that he had never 
intended. At last he stopped and put his brushes slowly down. Taking 
off his spectacles, he said, ‘ Very well, that willdo. This is your portrait. 
We will put it aside and finish it another day.’ ‘ Now, if you please,’ 
he added, dragging out a new grey canvas, ‘ we will begin mine.’ ” 

M. Duret posed to Whistler at the same time as Lady Archibald 
Campbell. When she could not come Whistler would telegraph him, 
and day by day he watched the progress of her portrait while he was 
growing. Business brought M. Duret to London. He had always 
been much with artists in Paris, had been intimate with Courbet, 
was still with Fantin, Manet, and Bracquemond. He recognised the 
genius of men at whom the world scoffed, and it was he who by an 
article in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts (April 1881) made the French 
realise their mistake of years, and again give Whistler the place so long 
denied him. 

216 [1882 


Dw > Sap 
iy in Sor 


DRAWING IN WASH FOR A CATALOGUE OF BLUE AND WHITE 
NANKIN PORCELAIN 


In the possession of Pickford R, Waller, Esq. 


(See page 157) 


SLUDY 


LITHOTINT. W. 2 


From a print lent by T. R. Way, Esq. 
(See page 157) 


Tue Joy or Lire 


One evening in 1883, after a private view, Whistler and Duret 
were talking over the pictures they had seen, and in discussing the 
portrait of the President of some society, Whistler declared that red 
robes of office were not in character with modern heads, and that a 
man should be painted in the costume of his time, and he asked Duret 
to pose to him that he might show what could be done with evening 
dress, the despair of painters. The experiment was not so original 
as Duret seemed to think. Leyland was painted in this way ten years 
before, when Whistler proved the truth of Baudelaire’s assertion that 
the great colourist can get colour from a black coat, a white shirt, 
against a dark background. Sir Henry Cole also posed in evening 
dress. Whistler did not rely entirely upon so simple a scheme in his. 
portrait of Duret, who has a pink domino over his arm, a red fan in 
his hand. His portrait is called Arrangement in Flesh Colour and 
Black. 

M. Duret describes Whistler at work. He marked slightly with 
chalk the place for the figure on the canvas, and began at once to put 
it in, in colour; at the end of the first sitting the scheme was there. 
This was the method that delighted Whistler. The difficulty with him 
was not to begin a portrait, but to finish it. The painting was brought 
almost to completion, rubbed out, begun again, and repainted ten times. 
Duret saw that it was a question not only of drawing, but of colour, of 
tone, and understood Whistler’s theory that to bring the whole into 
harmony and preserve it the whole must be repainted as a whole, if 
there was any repainting to be done. There are finer portraits, but 
not many that show so well Whistler’s meaning when he said that 
colour is “‘the arrangement of colour.” The rose of the domino, 
the fan, and the flesh is so managed that the cold grey of the background 
seems to be flushed with rose. Duret, when he showed the picture, 
took a sheet of paper, cut a hole in it, and placed it against 
the background, to prove that the grey, when surrounded by white, 
is pure and cold without a touch of rose, and that Whistler got his 
effect by his knowledge of the relation of colour and his mastery of tone. 

The Lady Meux—Black and White went to the Salon of 1882, cata- 
logued as Portrait de M. Harry—Men, to the confusion of commentators. 
The Harmony in Flesh Colour and Pink was shown at the Grosvenor with 
Nocturne in Blue and Silver, Scherzo in Blue—The Blue Girl, Nocturne 
1883] 217 


James McNertt WuistLer 


in Black and Gold—Southampton Water, Harmony in Black and Red, 
Note in Black and Opal—fersey, Blue and Brown—San Brelade’s Bay. 
The Times was unable to decide whether Whistler was making fun 
of them or whether something was wrong with his eyes. The Pall 
Mall regretted that “if the Lady Meux was full of fine and subtle 
qualities of drawing, the Scherzo in Blue [Miss Waller] was the sketch 
of a scarecrow in a blue dress without form and void. It is very difficult 
to believe that Mr. Whistler is not openly laughing at us when he holds 
up before us such a piece as this. His counterpart in Paris, the eccentric 
M. Manet, has at least more sincerity than to exhibit his work in such 
an imperfect condition.” 

But Whistler now had defenders. An “ Art Student ” wrote the 
next day to the Pall Mail to point out that “ at the private, and there- 
fore, presumably, the Press, view, The Blue Girl was seen in an un- 
finished state, having been sent there merely to take up its space on the 
wall. It was removed immediately, and has been since finished. Had 
the critic seen it since he would hardly have called it without form and 
void. The want of artistic sincerity is certainly the last charge that 
can be brought against a man who has followed his artistic intention 
with such admirable and unswerving singleness of purpose.” 

From this time onward Whistler no longer fought his battles 
alone. 

Eighteen eighty-two was the year of The Paddon Papers. Mr. Cole 
noted in his diary: ‘‘ September 24. To Jimmy’s. He lent me proof 
of his Paddon and Howell correspondence. Amusing, but too 
personal for general interest.” We agree with Mr. Cole. There were 
complications of no importance with Howell, in which Paddon, a 
diamond merchant, figured, and complications over a Chinese cabinet 
which Mr. Morse bought from Whistler when he moved from No. 2 
Lindsey Row. For long Mr. Morse had only the lower part, while 
Howell kept the top. Whistler, who thought nothing concerning him 
trivial, published this correspondence in a pamphlet, called The Paddon 
Papers: The Owl and the Cabinet, interesting now only because it is 
rare and because it was the end of all relations between himself and 
Howell. | 

In the early winter of 1883 Whistler gave the second exhibition 
of his Venetian etchings at the Fine Art Society’s. The prints, 
218 [1883 


Tue Joy or Lire 


fifty-one in number, included several London subjects. He deco- 
rated the gallery in white and yellow. The wall was white with 
yellow hangings, the floor was covered with pale yellow matting 
and the couches with pale yellow serge. The cane-bottomed chairs 
were painted yellow. There were yellow flowers in yellow pots, a 
white and yellow livery for the attendant, and white and yellow 
Butterflies for his friends. At the private view Whistler wore yellow 
socks just showing above his shoes, and the assistants wore yellow 
neckties. He prepared the catalogue; the brown paper cover, form, 
and size now established. He printed after each number a quotation 
from the critics of the past, and on the title-page, “‘ Out of their own 
mouths shall ye judge them.” A friend who looked over the proofs 
for him writes us: 

“* We came to ‘ there is merit in them, and I do not wish to under- 
stand it.’ [A quotation from the article in the Nineteenth Century 
which Sir Frederick Wedmore must wish could be forgotten.] Jimmy 
yelled with joy, and thanked the printer for his intelligent misreading 
of understate. ‘I think we will let that stand as it is,’ he said. Iwas 
amused at the private view to see him discussing the question with 
Wedmore, who, naturally, did not think it quite fair.” 

Before the show opened it was, Whistler told us, ‘‘ Well, you know, a 
source of constant anxiety to everybody and of fun to me. On the 
ladder, when I was hanging the prints, I could hear whispers: no 
one would be able to see the etchings! And then I would laugh, ‘ Dear 
me, of course not! that’s all right. In an exhibition of etchings 
the etchings are the last things people come to see!’ And then 
there was the private view, and I had my box of wonderful little 
Butterflies, and I distributed them only among the select few, so that, 
naturally, everybody was eager to be decorated. And when the 
crowd was greatest Royalty appeared, quite unprecedented at a private 
view, and the crowd was hustled into another room while the Prince 
and Princess of Wales went round the gallery, looking at everything, 
the Prince chuckling over the catalogue. ‘I say, Mr. Whistler, what 
is this?’ he asked when he came to the Nocturne—Palaces. ‘I am 
afraid you are very malicious, Mr. Whistler,’ the Princess said.” 

Those who received the little Butterflies thought them charming. 
Mrs. Marzetti writes us : 

1883] 219 


James McNertt WuisTLeR 


“| have a few treasures which I guard most jealously ; one is the 
golden Butterfly that he made us wear at the private view of his exhi- 
bition in Bond Street, in the original little card box in which he sent 
them (three I think) to mother, with a message written on the lid, 
and signed with his Butterfly.” 

The public laughed. They thought the Butterflies added to the 
screaming farce, the foppery of the whole thing. The attendant in 
yellow and white livery was called the poached egg. The catalogue was 
worse. Poor Wedmore and the others could hardly like to have their 
blunders and blindness immortalised. Most of them made the best of it 
by refusing to see in him anything but the jester. His humour was 
compared to Mark Twain’s, and he to Barnum, and the show was “ ex- 
cruciatingly agreeable.” Some honestly thought his work rubbish, and 
found his last little joke dull without being cheap. Their ridicule 
has become ridiculous. As for Whistler’s etchings, the price of the 
series of Twelve, as of the Twenty-Szx issued a year or so later in which 
many of these prints were published, was fifty guineas; on May 27, 
1908, the single print Nocturne—Palaces sold in Paris for one hundred 
and sixty-eight guineas, and we have been offered two hundred pounds 
for our Traghetto. ‘The etchings were also shown in decorated rooms 
in Boston and Philadelphia. 

For the exhibitions of 1883 he had no new work, but sent two earlier 
Nocturnes to the Grosvenor and to the Salon the Mother, and was 
awarded a third-class medal, the only recompense he ever received 
at the Salon. In the winter of 1883-84 he worked a great deal out 
of doors, spending many weeks at St. Ives, Cornwall. He took no 
interest in landscape; ‘‘ there were too many trees in the country,” 
he said. But he loved the sea, from the days of The Blue Wave at 
Biarritz and The Shores of Brittany until one of the last summers when 
he painted at Domburg, in Holland. The Cornish sketches were sent 
to his show of Notes, Harmonies, Nocturnes, at Dowdeswell’s Gallery 
in May 1884, the first exhibition in which he included many water- 
colours. The medium had been difficult to him; now he was its 
master. He used it to record subjects as characteristic of London 
as the subjects of his pastels were of Venice. There were also studies 
and sketches in Holland, for he was always running about again. The 
interest of the catalogue was in the preface, L’Envoze he called it, 
220 [1884 


THE Joy oF LIFE 


and was so laughed at not only for the place he gave it, but for the 
spelling, that he searched the dictionaries, and then declared, we cannot 
say with what authority, that envoie means some sort of snake. “ Ha 
ha! that’s it! Venom!” he said. The Envoie, without his explana- 
tion, is interesting, for it consists of the Propositions No. 2, which have 
become famous : that a picture is finished when all traces of the means 
that produced it have disappeared ; that industry in art is a necessity, 
not a virtue; that the work of the master reeks not of the sweat of the 
brow ; that the masterpiece should appear as the flower of the painter, 
perfect in its bud as in its bloom. He decorated the gallery: delicate 
rose on the walls, white dado, white chairs, and pale azaleas in rose- 
flushed jars. The Butterfly, tinted in rose, was on the card of invi- 
tation. The Arrangement in Flesh Colour and Grey was as little 
appreciated as the Yellow and White in 1883; to the critics it was a 
new affectation. 

There were signs of appreciation when, in 1884, Whistler sent 
the Carlyle to the Loan Exhibition of Scottish National Portraits 
at Edinburgh, where it created an impression. There had been 
attempts to sell the picture. M. Duret tried to interest an Irish 
collector, who, however, did not dare to buy it. It was offered to 
Mr. Scharfe, director of the British National Portrait Gallery, who 
not only refused to consider the offer, but laughed at the idea that 
“such work should pass for painting.” The first endeavour to secure 
it for a national collection came from George R. Halkett, who urged 
its purchase for the Scottish National Gallery in the Scotsman (October 
6, 1884). He was supported by Mr. William Hole in a letter Pegg 
the following day. 

Unfortunately, the subscription paper disclaimed spine vals of 
Whistler’s art and theories on the part of subscribers. Whistler, 
indignant, telegraphed to Edinburgh: “ The price of the Carlyle has 
advanced to one thousand guineas. Dinna ye hear the bagpipes?” 
The price he had asked was four hundred, and this ended the nego- 
tiations;: 

Why about this time Whistler should have become involved in a 
Church Congress in the Lake Country, unless he was coming from 
or going to Scotland, we never have been able to explain. He told 
us about it years later, and he seemed no less amazed than we. Jf. 
1884] 221 


James McNeitt WHIsTLER 


was just about to start for the Lakes, and Whistler was reminded of 
his excursion there. We give the note made at the time: 

“ Sunday, September 16 (1900). Whistler dined, and Agnes 
Repplier—not a successful combination. The dinner dragged until 
E. J. Sullivan happened to come in, and Whistler woke up, and, all 
of a sudden, we hardly know how, he was plunged into the midst of 
the Lake Country and a Church Congress, travelling third class with 
the clergy and their families, eating jam and strange meals with 
quantities of tea, and visiting the Rev. Mr. Green in his prison, shut 
up by his bishop for burning candles, and altogether the hero and 
important person he would never be on coming out. An amazing 
story, but what Whistler was doing in the Lakes with the clergy he 
did not appear to know; the story was enough.” 

The only result of the expedition was the etching done in Cumber- 
land, and his impression of the unpicturesqueness of the Lakes: the 
mountains “ were all little round hills with little round trees out of 
a Noah’s Ark.” What he thought of great mountain forms we do not 
know for, save on the trip to Valparaiso and going to Italy, he never 
saw them. Yet the lines of the coast in the Crépuscule show that he 
could render mountains. But, as he said, the mountains of Cumberland 
are only little round hills. At the end of his life he saw the mountains 
of Corsica, Gibraltar, and Tangier, but there is no record. 


CHAPTER XXV: AMONG FRIENDS. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN 
EIGHTY-ONE TO EIGHTEEN EIGHTY-SEVEN. 


Ir was in the summer of 1884 that J. met Whistler. Up to this time 
we have had to rely upon what Whistler and those who knew him 
have told us. Henceforward we write from our own knowledge. 

This is J.’s story of the meeting: “I first saw Whistler July 13, 
1884. I had been asked by Mr. Gilder, editor of the Century Magazine, 
to make the illustrations for a series of articles on Old Chelsea by Dr. 
B. E. Martin, and Mr. Drake, the art editor, suggested that if I could 
get Whistler to etch, draw, or paint something in Chelsea for the 
Century, the Century would be very glad to have it. His water-colours 
and pastels were being shown at Dowdeswell’s—WNotes, Harmonies, 
222 : [1884 


Amonc FRIENDS 


Nocturnes—and there his address was given me: No. 13 Tite 
Street. 

*“‘ The house did not strike me, I only remember the man and his 
work. I knocked, the door was slightly opened, and I handed in 
my letter from Mr. Gilder. I was left in the street. Then the door 
was opened wide, and Whistler asked me in. He was all in white, 
his waistcoat had long sleeves, and every minute it seemed as if he 
must begin to juggle with glasses. For to be honest, my first impression 
was of a bar-keeper strayed from a Philadelphia saloon into a Chelsea 
studio. Never had I seen such thick, black, curling hair. But in 
the midst was the white lock, and keen, brilliant eyes flashed at me 
from under the thick, bushy eyebrows. 

“At the end of the hall into which he took me was a shadowy 
passage, then some steps, a light room beyond, and on an easel the 
portrait of a little man with a violin, the Sarasate, that had never 
been seen outside the studio. Whistler stopped me in the passage 
and asked me what I thought of the picture. I cannot recall his words. 
I was too overwhelmed by the dignity of the portrait to remember 
what he said. 

“Later on he brought out The Falling Rocket. ‘ Well now, what . 
do you think of that ? What is it ?’ 

“I said fireworks, and I supposed one of the Cremorne pictures. 

“¢ Oh, you do, do you? Isn’t it amazing? Bring tots, idiots, 
imbeciles, blind men, children, anything but the Islander, and they 
know ; even you, who stole the name of my Little Venice.’ 

“This referred to an etching of mine which had been published 
under the title of Little Venice. Why Whistler did not resent this 
always or let it interfere with our friendship later, I do not know, 
for Mr. Keppel has told me he felt bitterly about it at the time. 

“Whistler also showed me some of his pastels. And he talked, 
and I forget completely what he said until, finally, 1 suggested why 
I had come, for I did not think there was any greater honour than 
to see one’s work in the pages of the Century. There was some excuse 
delightfully made. Then he called to someone who appeared from a 
corner. And Whistler said to him, ‘ Here’s a chance for you. But 
you will do these things.’ And that was my introduction to Mr. 
Mortimer Menpes. 

1884] 223 


James McNeitit WuisTLeR 


“This was not what I had bargained for, and I said promptly, 
‘Mr. Whistler, I came here to ask you to let us have some drawings 
of Chelsea. If you cannot, why, I’ll do them myself.’ 

“¢ ¢ Stay and lunch,’ Whistler said, and there was lunch, a wonderful 
curry, in a bright dining-room—a yellow and blue room. Later on 
he took me down to the Embankment, and, though it seemed so little 
like him, showed me the Carlyle statue and Turner’s house. He pointed 
out his own houses in Lindsey Row, and told me of a photographer 
who had reproduced all his pictures and photographed old Chelsea. 
I remember, too, asking Whistler about the Thames plates, and his 
telling me they were all done on the spot. And then he drove me in 
a cab to Piccadilly, and asked me to come and see him again. 

“The next Sunday I went with Mr. Stephen Parrish to Haden’s, 
in Hertford Street. We were taken to the top storey, where Haden 
was working on the mezzotint of the Breaking up of the Agamemnon. 
I asked him—I must have almost paralysed him—what he thought 
of Whistler, and he told me that if ever he had to sell either his collection 
of Whistlers or of Rembrandts, the Rembrandts should go first. He 
told that story often—and later they both went.—Downstairs, in a 
sort of conservatory at the back of the dining-room, was a printing 
press. Lady Haden joined us at lunch. So also did Mr. Hopkinson 
Smith, resurrecting vast numbers of American ‘chestnuts.’ I can 
recall that both Parrish and I found him in the way, and I can also 
recall his getting us into such a state that, as we came down a street 
leading into Piccadilly, Parrish vented his irritation on one of the 
public goats which in those days acted both as scavengers and police 
for London. As the goat put down his head to defend himself, Parrish 
put up his umbrella, and the goat fled into the open door of a club. 
What happened after that we did not wait to see. 

“‘T saw Whistler only once again that summer. He was in Charing 
Cross Station, in front of the bookstall. He wore a black frock-coat, 
white trousers, patent leather shoes, top hat, and he was carrying, 
the only time I ever saw it, the long cane. I did not want to speak 
to him, and I liked his looks less than when I first met him. 

“ Karly in the autumn of 1884 we went to Italy, and it was several 
years after our return before I got really to know him, and to understand 
that his appearance was to him merely a part of the ‘ joke of life.’ ” 
224 [1884 


TALL BRIDGE 


LITHOGRAPH. W. 9 


From a print lent by T. R. Way, Esq. 
(See page 157) 


C°M ‘INILOHLIT 


HANYNLOON 


(481 28nd 2as) 


Amonc FRIENDS 


CHAPTER XXVI: AMONG FRIENDS. THE YEARS EIGH- 
TEEN EIGHTY-ONE TO EIGHTEEN EIGHTY-SEVEN CON- 
TINUED. 


WHISTLER said he could not afford to keep a friend, but he was never 
without many. A photograph taken in his studio in 1881 shows him 
the centre of a group, of whom the others are Julian and Waldo Story, 
sons of W. W. Story; Frank Miles, a painter from whom great things 
were expected; and the Hon. Frederick Lawless, a sculptor. In the 
background is a little statuette everybody wanted to know the merit of, 
explained one day by Whistler, “‘ Well, you know—why, you can take it 
up and—well, you can set it down!” Mr. Lawless writes us that 
Whistler modelled the little figure, though we never heard that he 
modelled anything, and Professor Lantéri says he never worked in the 
round. Mr. Pennington suggests that the statuette was by Mr. Waldo 
Story, but Mr. Lawless says : 

“When Whistler lived in his London studio he often modelled 
graceful statuettes, and one day he put up one on a vase, asking me to 
photograph it. Isaid he must stand besideit. He said, ‘ But we must 
make a group and all be photographed,’ and that I was to call out to 
his servant when to take the lid off the camera, and when to put it 
back. I then developed the negative in his studio.” 

Mr. Francis James, often at 13 Tite Street, has many memories, 
specially of one summer evening when Coquelin ainé and a large party 
came to supper and Whistler kept them until dawn and then took them 
to see the sun rise over the Thames, a play few had ever performed in. 

For two or three years no one was more with Whistler than Sir 
Rennell Rodd. He writes us: 

“Tt was in ’82, ’83 that I saw most of him. Frank Miles, Waldo 
and Julian Story, Walter Sickert, Harper Pennington, and, at one time, 
Oscar Wilde, were constantly there. Jimmy, unlike many artists, 
liked a camarade about the place while he was working, and talked and 
laughed and raced about all the time, putting in the touches delicately, 
after matured thought, with long brushes. There was a poor fellow 
who had been a designer for Minton—but his head had given way 
and he was already quite mad—used to be there day after day for 
1883 | P 225 


JAMEs McNeitt WHISTLER 


months and draw innumerable sketches on scraps of brown paper, cart- 
ridge boards, anything—often full of talent, but always mad. Well, 
Jimmy humoured him and made his last weeks of liberty happy. 
Eventually he had to be removed to an asylum, and died raving mad. 
I used to help Whistler often in printing his etchings. It was very 
laborious work. He would manipulate a plate for hours with the ball 
of the thumb and the flat of the palm to get just the right superficial 
ink left on it, while I damped the paper, which came out of old folio 
volumes, the first and last sheets, with a fairly stiff brush. And often, 
for a whole morning’s work, only one or two prints were achieved which 
satisfied his critical eye, and the rest would be destroyed. There was 
a Venetian one which gave him infinite trouble in the printing. 

‘“‘ He was the kindest of men, though he was handy with his cane. 
In any financial transaction he was scrupulously honourable, though 
he never had much money at his disposal. 

“We had great fun over the many correspondences and the cata- 
logues elaborated in those days in Tite Street. . . . Hewas demoniacal 
in controversy, and the spirit of elfin mischief was developed in him 
to the point of genius... . Pellegrini was much at Whistler’s in 
those days, and in a way the influence of Whistler was fatal to him. His 
admiration was unbounded and he abandoned his art, in which, as 
Jimmy used to say, ‘ he had taught all the others what none of them had 
been able to learn,’ and took to trying to paint portraits in Whistler’s 
manner without any success. 

“One of the few modern painters I have ever heard him praise 
was Albert Moore, and I am not sure that was not to some extent 
due to a personal liking for the man. It always struck me his literary 
judgments, if he ever happened to express any, were extraordinarily 
sound and brilliant in summing up the merits or demerits of a writer. 

“He had an extraordinary power of putting a man in his place. — 
I remember a breakfast which Waldo Story gave at Dieudonné’s. Every- — 
one there had painted a picture, or written a book, or in some way out- — 
raged the Philistine, with the exception of one young gentleman, whose ~ 
raison d@’étre there was not so apparent as were the height of his collars 
and the glory of his attire. He nevertheless ventured to lay down the 
law on certain matters which seemed beyond his province, and even 
went so far as to combat some dictum of the master’s. who, readjusting — 
226 [1883 


Amonc FRIENDS 


his eye-glass, looked pleasantly at him, and said, ‘ And whose son are 
you ? > P 

For two or three years Oscar Wilde was so much with Whistler that 
everyone who went to the studio found him there, just as everyone 
who went into society saw them together. Wilde had come up from 
Oxford not long before the Ruskin trial, with a reputation as a brilliant 
undergraduate, winner of the Newdigate prize, and he now posed as 
the apostle of “ Beauty.” Many a reputation is lost between Oxford 
and London, but his was strengthened. Oscar’s witty sayings were 
repeated and his youth seemed to excuse his pose. Whistler impressed 
him. At Oxford Wilde had followed Ruskin, and broken stones 
on the road which was to lead the young to art; he had read with 
Pater, he had accepted the teaching of Morris and Burne-Jones, and 
their master Rossetti. But Ruskin was impossible to follow, Pater 
was a recluse, Rossetti’s health was broken, the prehistoric Fabians, 
Morris and Burne-Jones, were the foci of a little group of their own. 
When Wilde came to London Whistler was the focus of the world. 
Whistler was sought out, Wilde tried to play up. In Tite Street blue 
and white was used, not as a symbol of faith, but every day; flowers 
bloomed, not as a pledge of “ culture,”’ but for their colour and form ; 
beauty was accepted as no discovery, but as the aim of art since the 
first artist drew a line and saw that it was beautiful. Whistler knew all 
this. Wilde fumbled with it. 

Whistler was flattered by Wilde. He was looked upon as the world’s 
jester when Wilde fawned upon him. Other young men gathered 
about Whistler had name and reputation to make. But Wilde’s name 
was in every man’s mouth; he glittered with the glory of the work he 
was to do. He was the most promising poet of his generation and he 
was amusing. There was a charm in his personality. We remember 
when we met him on his lecture tour in America, and hardly knew 
whether the magnificence on the platform where, in velvet knicker- 
bockers, he faced with calmness rows of college boys each bearing a lily, 
and stood with composure their collective emotion as he sipped a glass 
of water, was more wonderful than his gaiety when we talked with him 
afterwards. It has been said that he gave the best of himself in his 
talk. If Whistler liked always to have a companion, his pleasure was 
increased when he found someone as brilliant. Wilde spent hours in 
1883 | 227 


James McNertt WuisTLER 


the studio, he came to Whistler’s Sunday breakfasts, he assisted at 
Whistler’s private views. Whistler went with him everywhere. There 
were few functions at which they were not present. At receptions 
the company divided into two groups, one round Whistler, the other 
round Wilde. It was the fashion to compare them. To the world 
that ran after them, that thought itself honoured, or notorious, by 
their presence, they seemed inseparable. 

The trouble began when Whistler discovered how small was Wilde’s 
knowledge of art ; he could never endure anybody in the studio who did 
not understand. Whistler wrote of Wilde as a man “ with no more 
sense of a picture than of the fit of a coat.”” The Gentile Art shows that 
Whistler was furious with Wilde’s borrowing from him. That Wilde 
took his good where he found it is neither more nor less than what has 
always been done—what Whistler did. But the genius, from the good 
thus taken, evolves something of his own. Wilde was content to shine 
personally and let the great things expected of him wait. When it 
was a question of wit, there was no one to whom Wilde could go 
except Whistler. It is all expressed in the old story: “ I wish I had 
said that, Whistler.” ‘ You will, Oscar, you will.” In matters of 
art Wilde had everything to learn from Whistler, who, though ever 
generous, resented Wilde’s preaching in the provinces the truths which 
he had taught for years. This is all in The Gentle Art. “ Oscar” 
had ‘‘ the courage of the opinions . . . of others!” and again: “ Oscar 
went forth as my St. John, but, forgetting that humility should be his 
chief characteristic and unable to withstand the unaccustomed respect 
with which his utterances were received, he not only trifled with my 
shoe, but bolted with the latchet ! ” 

Mr. Cole, in 1884, noted in his diary that Whistler “ was strong 
on Oscar Wilde’s notions of art which he derived from him (Jimmy).” 
Mr. Herbert Vivian tells the story of a dinner given by Whistler after 
Wilde had been lecturing : 

“¢ ¢ Now, Oscar, tell us what you said to them,’ Whistler kent insist- 
ing, and Wilde had to repeat all the phrases, while Whistler rose and 


made solemn bows, with his hand across his breast, in mock acceptance 


of his guests’ applause. . . . The cruel part of the plagiarism lay inthe — 
fact that, when Whistler published his Zen O’Clock, many people — 


thought it had all been taken from Wilde’s lecture.” 


228 [1883 


Amonc FRIENDS 


Whistler grew more and more exasperated by the use Wilde made 
of him. Their intimacy was closest in the early eighties when Whistler 
was bewildering the world deliberately ; Wilde copied him clumsily. 
The world, that did not know them, mistook one for the other and 
thought Whistler as much an esthete as Wilde. When Patience was 
produced, and when it was revived a few years ago, Bunthorne, who 
was Wilde, appeared with Whistler’s black curls and white lock, mous- 
tache, tuft, eye-glass, and laughed with Whistler’s ‘‘Ha ha!” Whistler, 
seeing Wilde in a Polish cap and “‘ green overcoat befrogged and wonder- 
fully befurred,” desired him to “restore those things to Nathan’s, 
and never again let me find you masquerading the streets of my Chelsea 
in the combined costumes of Kossuth and Mr. Mantalini!” To be 
in danger of losing his pose before the world was bad enough, but to 
be mistaken for another man who rendered him ridiculous was worse. 
No one has summed up the position better than the Times in a notice 
of Wilde’s Collected Works : 

“With a mind not a jot less keen than Whistler’s, he had none 
of the conviction, the high faith, for which Whistler found it worth 
while to defy the crowd. Wilde had poses to attract the crowd. 
And the difference was this, that while Whistler was a prophet who 
liked to play Pierrot, Wilde grew into a Pierrot who liked to play the 
prophet.” : 

If Whistler ever played Pierrot, it was with a purpose. Where art 
was concerned he was serious. Wilde was serious about nothing. His 
two topics were “self and art,” and his interest in both was part of 
his bid for notoriety. He might jest about himself, but flippancy, if 
art was his subject, was to Whistler a crime. The only way he showed 
his resentment was by refusing to take Wilde seriously about anything. 
Even when Wilde was married, he was not allowed to forget, for 
Whistler telegraphed to the church, “‘ Fear I may not be able to reach 
you in time forthe ceremony. Don’t wait.” Later, in Paris, he called 
Wilde “ Oscar, bourgeois malgré lut,” a witticism none could appreciate 
better than the Parisians. As soon as he began to make a jest of Wilde 
he ended the companionship to which, while it lasted, London society 
owed much gaiety. 

The relation between Whistler and artists now coming to the 
studio was less that of friends than of Master and Followers, as they 
1883] 229 


James McNeriit WHuisTLEeR 


called themselves. He was forty-six when he returned from Venice, 
and there were few men of the new generation who shared none of the 
doubts of his contemporaries, but believed in him. The devotion of 
this group became infatuation. They were ready to do anything for 
him. Families became estranged and engagements were broken off 
because of him. They fought his battles; ran his errands, spied 
out the land for him; published his letters, and read them to 
everybody. They formedacourt about him. They exaggerated every- 
thing, even their devotion, and became caricatures of him, as excessive 
in imitation as in devotion. He denied the right of any, save the 
artist, to speak authoritatively of art ; they started a club to train the 
classes—Princes, Prime Ministers, Patrons, Ambassadors, Members 
of Parliament—to blind faith in Master and Followers. Whistler 
mixed masses of colours on the palette, keeping them under water in 
saucers. The Followers mixed theirs in vegetable dishes and kept 
them in milk-cans, labelled Floor, Face, Hair, Lips. He had a table- 
palette; they adopted it, but added hooks to hang their cans of 
paint on. He used his paint very liquid—the “sauce” of the 
Nocturnes ; they used such quantities of medium that as much went 
on the floor as on the canvas, and, before a picture was blocked in, 
they were wading in liquid masterpieces. Many of his brushes were 
large ; they worked with whitewash brushes. They copied his personal 
peculiarities. One evening at a dinner when he wore a white waist- 
coat and all the buttons, because of the laundress, came out, a 
Follower, seeing it buttonless, hurried from the room, and returned 
with his bulging, sure that he was in the movement. 

Whistler accepted their devotion, and, finding them willing to 
squander their time, monopolised it. There was plenty for everybody 
to do in the studio. If they complained that he took advantage of 
them, he proved to them that the fault was theirs. Mr. Menpes 
writes : 

“We seldom asked Whistler questions about his work. ... If we 
had, he would have been sure to say, ‘ Pshaw! You must be occupied 
with the Master, not with yourselves. There is plenty to be done.’ 
If there was not, Whistler would always make a task for you—a picture 
to be taken into Dowdeswells’, or a copper plate to have a ground put 
Gor , | 
230 [1883 


Amonc FRIENDS 


No one respected the work of others more than Whistler. But 
if others did not respect it themselves and made him a present of their 
time he did not refuse. If he allowed the Followers to accompany 
him in his little journeys, it was because they were so eager. When 
he went with Walter Sickert and Mortimer Menpes to St. Ives, in the 
winter of 1883-84, they were up at six o’clock because it pleased him ; 
they dared not eat till he rang the bell. They prepared his panels, mixed 
his colours, cleaned his brushes, taking a day off for fishing if Whistler 
chose, abjuring sentiment if he objected. Whistler saw the humour in 
their attitude and was the more exacting. The Followers were not 
allowed their own opinions. Once, when Walter Sickert ventured to 
praise Leighton’s Harvest Moon at the Manchester Art Treasures 
Exhibition, Whistler, hearing of it, telegraphed: “ The Harvest Moon 
rises over Hampstead [where Sickert lived], and the cocks of Chelsea 
crow.” The Followers, however, knew that if they were of use to 
Whistler, he was of infinitely more use to them, and that submission 
to his rule and exposure to his wit were a small price to pay. Mr. 
Sickert tells another story. He and Whistler were once printing etchings 
together, when the former dropped a copper plate. ‘“* How like you!” 
said Whistler. Five minutes afterwards the improbable happened. 
Whistler, who was never clumsy, dropped one himself. There was a 
pause. ‘‘ How unlike me!” was his remark. 

Mr. Menpes, who, in Whistler as I Knew Him, makes more of the 
follies than the privileges of the Followers, cannot ignore their debt. 
They worked for him not only in the studio, but in the street, hunting 
with him for little shops, corners and models, painting at his side, 
walking home with him after dinner or supper at the club, learning 
from him to observe and memorise the night. To them he was full 
of kindliness, when to the world he often seemed insolent and audacious, 
and after his death—even before—some denied him. Later Whistler 
said that the Followers were there in the studio; yes, but they never 
painted there; they were kept well in the background. 

American artists, in London or passing through, began to make their 
way tothe studio. Otto Bacher records in 1883 Whistler’s friendliness, 
the pictures in the studio, their dinners together. In 1885 Mr. John 
W. Alexander came, commissioned by the Century to make a drawing 
of him for a series of portraits. Whistler posed for a little while, though 
1885] 231 


James McNeitt WuiIsTLEeR 


unwillingly, and criticised the drawing so severely that Mr. Alexander 
tore it up. After that, he says, Whistler posed like a lamb. Mr. 
Harper Pennington has written for us his reminiscences of those years : 

“*.. . Whistler was more than kind to me. Through him came 
everything. He introduced me right and left, and called me ‘ pupil’ ; 
took me about to picture shows and pointed out the good and bad. I 
remember my astonishment the first occasion of his giving unstinted 
praise to modern work, on which he seldom lavished positives. It was 
at the Royal Academy before one of those interiors of Orchardson’s. 
Well, he stood in front of the canvas, his hat almost on his nose, his 
‘tuft’ sticking straight out as it did when he would catch his nether 
lip between his teeth, and, presently, a long forefinger went out and 
circled round a bit of yellow drapery, ‘It would have been nice to 
have painted that,’ he said, as if he thought aloud. 

‘“‘ Another day we rushed to the National Gallery—‘ just to get the 
taste out of our mouths,’ he said—after a couple of hours’ wandering 
in the Royal Academy wilderness of Hardy Annual Horrors. Whistler 
went at once to almost smell the Canalettos, while I went across the 
Gallery, attracted by the Marriage ala Mode. It was my first sight of 
them. Up to that day I had supposed that what I was told and had 
read of Hogarth was the truth—the silly rubbish about his being only 
a caricaturist, so that when confronted with those marvels of technical » 
quality, I fairly gasped for breath, and then hurried over to where 
Whistler had his nose against the largest Canaletto, seized his arm, 
and said hurriedly, ‘ Come over here.’ ‘ What’s the matter ?” said he, 
turning round. ‘Why! Hogarth! He was a great painter!’ ‘Sh 
—sh !’ said he (pretending he was afraid that someone would overhear 
us). ‘Sh—sh! Yes, I know it, . . . but don’t you tell’em/? Later, 
Hogarth was thoroughly discussed and his qualities pointed out with 
that incisive manner which one had to be familiar with to understand. 

“‘ Whistler was reasonable enough and preferred a joke to a battle 
any day. Often he came to me in the King’s Road, breathing vengeance 
against this or that person, but when he went away it was invariably 
with a fin sourire and one of his little notes. His clairvoyance in the 
matter of two notes to Leighton was made manifest at my writing-table. 
The P.R.A. wrote a lame explanation to Whistler’s first query as to 
why he had not been invited to the Academy soirée, as President of the 
232 [1885 


NOCTURNE IN BLUE AND GOLD 
OLD BATTERSEA BRIDGE 


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In the National Gallery of British Art, Tate Gallery 
(See page 172) 


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NOCTURNE IN BLACK 


S. Untermeyer 


Tue Stupio IN THE FuLtHAM Roap 


R.S.B.A., ex-officio, or as Whistler. He came into my room one 
morning early—before I, sluggard, was awake !—and read to me an 
outline of a note he meant to write, and then wrote it with grace 
of diction and dainty composition, and the pretty balanced Butterfly 
for signature. When that was done, he turned to me (I was dressing 
then) and said: ‘Now, Har-r-rpur-r-r.2. (He liked to burr those r’s 
in ‘down-east’ fashion.) ‘ Now, Har-r-rpur-r-r, I know Leighton, 
he will fumble this. He will answer so-and-so’ (describing the answer 
- Leighton actually sent), ‘ and then I’ve got him!’ He chuckled, wrote 
another note—the retort to Leighton’s unwritten answer to Whistler’s 
not yet posted first note—which he read to me. That retort was sent 
almost verbatim, only one slight change made necessary by a turn of 
phrase in Leighton’s weak apology! That was‘ Amazing.’ His anger 
soon burnt out—the jest would come—and the whole thing boiled 
itself down in the World, or a line to ‘ Labby.’ ” 


CHAPTER XXVII: THE STUDIO IN THE FULHAM ROAD. 
iter onio es LIGHIEEN EIGHTY-FIVE TO EIGHTEEN 
EIGHTY-SEVEN. 


In 1885 Whistler moved from Tite Street to 454 Fulham Road. A 
shabby gate opened on a shabby lane leading to studios, one of which 
was his. Here Lady Archibald Campbell’s and M. Duret’s portraits 
were finished. Whistler was living at the time with Maud in a little 
house close by, since pulled down, which he called the “ Pink Palace,” 
having painted it himself. He was again hard up, and M. Duret, 
coming to dinner, would buy a good part of it on the way down and 
arrive, his pockets bulging with bottles and fruit and cake. Before 
long Whistler left the “ Pink Palace” for the Vale, Chelsea—“ an 
amazing place, you might be in the heart of the country, and there, 
two steps away, is the King’s Road.” It was the first house on the 
right beyond the iron gates, now demolished. But the whole place has 
gone. 

In the Court and Society Review (July 1, 1886) Mr. Malcolm C. 
Salaman described the Fulham Road studio and the work in progress : 

“The whitewashed walls, the wooden rafters, which partly form 
1886] 233 


James McNeritt WuisTLER 


a loft for the stowing away of canvases, the vast space unencumbered 
by furniture, and the large table-palette, all give the appearance of 
the working place. ... Mr. Whistler is not so feeble as to aim at 
theatrical effects in his costume. In the black clothes of ordinary 
wear, straight from the street, he stands at his easel. To those 
accustomed to studios the completeness of the arrangement . . . in 
accordance with the scheme of the picture that is in progress is striking, 
as striking indeed as the personality of the artist. His whole body 
seems instinct with energy and enthusiasm, his face lit up with flashes 
of quick and strong thought, as that of a man who sees with his brains 
as well as with his eyes. .. . 

“A word, by the way, about Mr. Whistler’s palette. As I saw it 
the other day, the colours were arranged almost with the appearance 
of a picture. In the centre was white and on one side were the various 
reds leading up to black, while on the other side were the yellows 
leading up to blue... . 

“And now a few words about some of the pictures which the 
master had almost ready for exhibition: A full-length figure of a girl 
in out-door black dress, with a fur cape and a hat trimmed with 
flowers. She stands against a dark background, and she lives in her 
frame. A full-length portrait of Mr. Walter Sickert, a favourite 
pupil of Mr. Whistler’s and one of his cleverest disciples. He is in 
evening dress, and stands against a dark wall. This is a picture that 
Velasquez himself would have delighted in. [It has vanished.] A 
full-length portrait of a man with a Spanish-looking head, painted 
in a manner that is surely of the greatest. [Perhaps the portrait of 
Chase or of Eldon; both have disappeared.] ... A superb portrait 
of Mrs. Godwin will rank among Mr. Whistler’s chefs d’a@uvre. The 
lady stands in an ample red cloak over a black dress, against red 
draperies, and in her bonnet is a red plume. Her hands rest on her 
hips, and her attitude is singularly vivacious. This picture has been 
painted in artificial light, as has also another of a lady seated in a 
graceful attitude, with one hand leaning over the back of a chair, while 
the other holds a fan. She wears a white evening dress, and is seen 
against a light background. [A picture we cannot identify.] Besides 
these Mr. Whistler showed me sketches of various groups of several 
girls on the seashore . . . [The Six Projects] and a sketch of Venus, 
234. [1886 


THE STUDIO IN THE FuLHAM Roap 


lovely in colour and design, the nude figure standing close to the sea, 
with delicate gauze draperies lightly lifted by the breeze. The studio 
is full of canvases and pictures in more or less advanced stages, and 
on one of the walls hang a number of pastel studies of nude and partially 
draped female figures. A portrait-sketch in black chalk of Mr. Whistler 
by M. Rajon also hangs on the wall.” 

The Further Proposition, which was quoted by Mr. Salaman, can be 
read in The Gentle Art. It is Whistler’s statement that a figure should 
keep well within the frame, and that flesh should be painted according 
to the light in which it is seen: the answer to the objection often 
made to his portraits because the “ flesh was low in tone.” A year 
later it was reprinted in the Art Fournal (April 1887) by Mr. Walter 
Dowdeswell, whose article was the first appreciation of Whistler in 
an important English magazine. Whistler, knowing the value of 
what he wrote, meant that his writings should be preserved, and he 
gave to Mr. Dowdeswell for publication the reply which he had made 
twenty years earlier to Hamerton’s criticism of the Symphony 1n White, 
No. III., but which was not then printed because the Saturday Review, 
where the criticism appeared, did not publish correspondence. Mr. 
Dowdeswell, describing the studio, adds a few details omitted by 
Mr. Salaman: ‘“ The soupgon of yellow in the rugs and matting; a 
table covered with old Nankin china; a crowd of canvases at the 
further end, and, pinned upon the wall on the right, a number of 
exquisite little notes of colour, and drawings of figures from life, in 
pastels, on brown paper.” 

Mr. E. J. Horniman, who had a studio near by, tells us that he often 
saw on the roof of the omnibus stable, just behind it, pictures put out to 
dry. 

Many who visited the studio were surprised to find Whistler 
working in white. He sometimes wore a white jacket; sometimes 
took off his coat and waistcoat. He was as fastidious with his 
work as with his dress. He could not endure a slovenly palette, or 
brushes and colours in disorder, though the palette had a raised edge 
to keep the colour off his sleeve. Unfortunately, after his wife’s death 
he ruined the two portraits of himself in the white painting jacket, 
which he never exhibited, by changing the white jacket to a black coat. 

Other reminiscences of Fulham Road we have from William M. 
1887] 235 


James McNe1ti WHISTLER 


Chase, who came to London in 1885, with a suggestion that he and 
Whistler should paint each other ; also, that Whistler should go back 
to America and open a school. ‘ Well, you know, that anyway will 
be all right, Colonel,” as Whistler called Chase. ‘‘ Of course, every- 
body will receive me; tug-boats will come down the Bay; it will be 
perfect!” He thought so seriously of going, that he hesitated to 
send to the London galleries work he would want for America. 

The two portraits were begun. Whistler painted a full-length 
of Chase, in frock-coat and top-hat, a cane held jauntily across his 
legs. As he wrote afterwards, in a letter included in The Gentle Art, 
“TI, who was charming, made him beautiful on canvas, the Masher 
of the Avenues.” Whistler was delighted with what he had done: 

“* Look at this, Colonel! Look at this; did you ever see anything 
finer 2” 

“It’s meek or modest, they'll have to put on your tombstone! ” 

“ Say ‘ and’ not ‘ or —meek and modest! H’m !—well, you know, 
splendid, Chase ! ” 

Chase remembers an evening when they were to dine out, and 
Whistler had to go home to dress, and it was almost the hour before he 
ventured to remind him. Then Whistler was astonished : 

“What, Chase, you can think of dinner and time when we are 
doing such beautiful things? Stay where you are, and they will be 
glad to see me whenever I come.” 

Everybody who has been with him in the studio knows how difficult 
it was for him to stop when he was absorbed in his work. Mr. Pen- 
nington says: “‘ Whistler’s habit of painting long after the hour when 
anybody could distinguish gradations of light and colour was the 
cause of much unnecessary repainting and many disappointments, 
for after leaving a canvas that seemed exquisite in the dusk of the 
falling night, he would return to it in the glare of the next morning 
and find unexpected effects that had been concealed by the twilight. 
Whistler never learned to hold his hand when daylight waned. The 
fascination of seeming to have caught the values led him far into the 
deceiving shades of night with often disastrous results.” 

Whistler’s portrait of Chase has vanished with many another. 
Chase painted Whistler also in frock-coat, without a hat, holding 
the long cane, against a yellow wall, and his portrait remains. Chase 
236 [1885 


Tue Strupio IN THE FuLHam Roap 


intended stopping a short time in London as he passed on to Madrid. 
But he found Whistler so delightful that his visit to Spain was put 
off. He has told many incidents of these months spent with Whistler 
in a lecture delivered in the United States, and in an article in the 
Century. A lecturer, no doubt, must adapt himself to his audience, 
and Chase has dwelt principally on Whistler, the man—Whistler, 
the dandy ; Whistler, the fantastic, designing, for the tour in America, 
a white hansom with yellow reins and a white and yellow livery for 
the nigger driver; Whistler, the traveller. They went together to 
Belgium and Holland. They stopped at Antwerp and saw the Inter- 
national Exhibition. Whistler said to us once that he could never be 
ill-natured, only wicked, and this was one of the occasions when he 
was wicked. In the gallery he refused to look at any pictures except 
those that told stories, asking Chase if the mouse would really scare 
the cat or the baby swallow the mustard-pot. The first interest he 
showed was in the work of Alfred Stevens. Before it he stood long ; 
at last, with his little finger pointing to a passage in the small canvas, 
“H’m, Colonel! you know one would not mind having painted 
that!’ Chase grew nervous as they approached the wall devoted 
to Bastien-Lepage, whom he admired, and he decided to leave Whistler. 
But Whistler would not hear of it. “ Dll say only one word, Chase,” 
he promised. Then they came to the Bastiens, ‘‘ H’m, h’m, Colonel, 
the one word—School !” On the journey from Antwerp to Amsterdam 
two Germans were in the train: ‘‘ Well, you, know, Colonel, if the 
Almighty ever made a mistake it was when he created the German ! ” 
Whistler said at the end of a few minutes. Chase told him that if 
he could speak German he might understand their interesting talk. 
Whistler answered in fluent German and talked nothing else, until, 
at Haarlem, Chase could endure it no longer and left. Whistler leaned 
out of the window as the train started, ‘‘ Think it over, Chase, and 
to-morrow morning you will come on to Amsterdam, and youll tell 
me that I’m right about the Germans ! ” 

One incident not told in print by Chase is that while in London 
he was the owner of the Mother. An American had given him money 
to buy pictures, and when he found that the Mother was to be had 
from Mr. Graves for one hundred pounds he bought it, but first was 
referred to Whistler by Mr. Graves. Whistler, delighted to learn 
1885] 237 


James McNeritt WuisTLeR 


that he could control the pictures deposited with the Pall Mall firm, 
agreed to everything, but the agreement, was settled the day before 
starting for Antwerp, and when Chase got the money from his bankers 
and hurried to the Graves Gallery it was closed, and he gave the cheque 
to Whistler. The picture was his, but only during the time of Whistler’s 
absence from London, for on his return Whistler could not bear to 
part with it and promptly sent the cheque back to Chase—or it may be 
that the trip with Chase helped him to change his mind. 

All this is characteristic, but it would be interesting to hear less 
of his play and more of his work from Chase, who gives only a glimpse 
of Whistler the artist, and then in lighter moods. He tells of one 
occasion when an American wanted to buy some etchings, and they 
were to lunch with him in the City to arrange the matter. Taking 
a hansom, late of course, they passed a grocer’s where Whistler stopped 
the driver: “ Well, Chase, what do you think? If I get him to move 
the box of oranges? What?” And then, still later, they drove on. 
Another time, Chase expressed surprise at Whistler’s refusing to deliver 
a picture to the lady who had bought it. But Whistler explained : 

“You know, Chase, the people don’t really want anything beautiful. 
They fill a room by chance with beautiful things, and some little 
trumpery something over the mantelpiece gives the whole damned 
show away. And if they pay a hundred pounds or so for a picture, 
they think it belongs to them. Well—why—it should only be theirs 
for a while; hung on their walls that they may rejoice in it and then 
returned.” Once, it is said, a lady drove up to the studio and told 
him: “I have bought one of your pictures, it is beautiful, but as it 
is always at exhibitions I never see it. But I’m told you have it.” 
“‘ Dear lady,” said Whistler, ‘‘ you have been misinformed, it is not 
here.” And she drove away. Later he found it: “ H’m, she was 
right about one thing, it is beautiful. But because she’s paid hundreds 
of pounds for it, she thinks she ought to have it all the time. She’s 
lucky if she gets it now and then.” 

It must be admitted that it is not easy from any standpoint to 
write of Whistler during the years that followed his return from 
Venice. The decade between 1880 and 1890 is the fullest of his full 
life. It was during these ten years that he opened his “ one man” 
shows amidst jeers, and closed them with success. It was during 
238 [1885 


Tue Ten O’Citocx 


these ten years that he conquered society, though society never realised 
it. It was during these ten years that, to make himself known, he 
became in the streets of London the observed of all observers, developing 
extraordinary costumes, attracting to himself the attention he wanted 
to attract. It was during these ten years that he began to wrap himself 
in mystery, as Degas said of him, and then go off and get photographed, 
when, as Degas also said, he acted as if he had no genius: but mystery 
and pose were part of the armour he put on to protect himself from, 
and draw to himself, a foolish public. It was during these ten years 
that he invented the Followers—and got rid of them; that he flitted 
from house to house, from studio to studio, and through England, 
France, Belgium, and Holland, until it is impossible to keep pace 
with him; that he captured the Press, though it is still unconscious 
of its capture; that he concentrated the interest of England, of the 
whole world upon him, with one object in view—that is, to make 
England, the whole world, look at his work. For, as he said, if he had 
not made people look at it they never would have done so. They never 
understood it, they hated it. They do not understand it to-day, 
and they hate it the more because he has succeeded and they have failed 
in their endeavours to ignore or ruin him. Even now that it is too 
late, they are crawling from their graves and spitting at him, flinging 
mud at his memory. 

In these crowded years two events stand out with special promi- 
nence, his Ten O’Clock and his invasion of the British Artists. One 
states definitely his views on art; the other shows as definitely the 
position he had attained among artists. 


CHAPTER XXVIII: THE TEN O'CLOCK. THE YEARS EIGH- 
TEEN EIGHTY-FOUR TO EIGHTEEN EIGHTY-EIGHT. 


Into The Ten O’Clock Whistler put all he had learned of art, all he 
knew to be unchangeable and everlasting. Mr. W. C. Alexander has 
told us that when he listened to The Ten O’Clock at Prince’s Hall, 
nothing in it was new to him; he had heard it for years from Whistler 
over the dinner-table. The only new thing was Whistler’s deter- 
mination to say in public what he had said in private. He was busy 
1884] 239 


James McNeritt WuiIsTLER 


with this in the autumn and winter of 1884-85. He would come at 
strange hours and read a page to Mr. Cole, in whose diary, from October 
until February, note follows note of his visits : 

“ October 24 (1884). Whistler to dine. We passed the evening 
writing out his views on Ruskin, art, etc. 

“‘ October 27. Jimmy to dinner, continuing notes as to himself 
and art. 

“ October 28. Writing out Whistler’s notes for him. 

“ October 29. Jimmy to dine. Writing notes as to his opinions 
on art matters, and discussing whether to offer them for publication to 
English Illustrated Magazine edited by Comyns Carr, or to whom ? ” 

Mr. G. A. Holmes, in his Chelsea house, was often roused by the 
sharp ring and double-knock, followed by Whistler with a page or 
paragraph for his approval. Mr. Menpes writes that “* scores of times— 
I might almost say hundreds of times—he paced up and down the 
Embankment at night, repeating to me sentences from the marvellous 
lecture.” A marvellous story. During a few days’ illness at his 
brother’s in Wimpole Street, where, when ill, he went, Mrs. Whistler 
recalled him sitting, propped up by pillows, reading passages to the 
doctor and herself. 

His plan for an article in the English Illustrated Magazine came to 
nothing. In November 1884 Lord Powerscourt, Mr. Ludovici says 
in the Art Fournal (July 1906), invited Whistler to Ireland to distribute 
prizes at an art school and speak to the students, and nothing was more 
appropriate than the notes he had written down. 

Mr. Cole records : 

“* November 19 (1884). Whistler called and told us how he was 
invited to Ireland, where he was sending some of his works, and would 
lecture in Dublin.” 

The invitation came from the Dublin Sketching Club, which held 
its exhibitions in Leinster Hall. Three other Americans—Sargent, 
Julian Story, and Ralph Curtis—were invited. No such collection 
of Whistler’s work had been seen out of London. Mr. Booth Pearsall, 
the honorary secretary, sends us this account : 

“He was exceedingly generous to a club of strangers, lending them 
twenty-five of his works. This collection included the Mother, Lady 
Meux, Carlyle, a number of Nocturnes, and other oils, water-colours, 

240 [1884 


Tue Ten O’Ciocx 


and pastels. The pictures had to be hung together in a group. As 
I was so interested in them, with Mr. Whistler’s permission, I had 
them photographed. He never asked for rights or commission, but, in 
the most gracious, generous way, gave us the permission to use the 
negatives as we liked. The exhibition was hardly opened before the 
critical music began, and in the papers and in conversation, a regular 
tempest arose that was highly diverting to Mr. Whistler. He begged 
me to send him everything said about the exhibition, and his letters 
show he quite enjoyed all the ferment. The whole of Dublin was 
convulsed, and many went to Molesworth Street to see the exhibition 
who rarely went to see anything of the kind. Then a terrible con- 
vulsion took place in the club: a group of members we had admitted, 
who photographed, got together, and drew up resolutions, that never 
again should such pictures be exhibited. None of these men could 
even paint. The talent of the club replied by having Mr. Whistler 
elected as hon. member, and it was carried, despite intense resistance. 
I took an active part in all this. It was with a view to helping Mr. 
Whistler that I did my best to have his Ten O’Clock given in Dublin. 
He was at first disposed to come over, but other matters prevented, 
and the matter dropped. During the time of the exhibition, I tried 
my utmost to sell the pictures, and an offer was made by a friend 
to purchase the Mother and the Carlyle, which seemed to promise well, 
but ultimately stopped. I did induce the friend to purchase Piccadilly, 
which had been No. 9, Nocturne in Grey and Gold—Piccadilly (water- 
colour), in his exhibition in Bond Street that May [Dowdeswell’s]. 
He was very much pleased indeed, and sent the Right Hon. Jonathan 
Hogg, P.C., a receipt, greatly to Mr. Hogg’s amusement, for an 
impression was rife that he never did attend to business. I know 
from friends, who knew Mr. Whistler, how much pleased he was, 
not only with the purchase of his pictures, but with the commotion 
that the exhibition caused.” 

Whistler did not give up the idea of a lecture. Archibald Forbes 
heard him read, was impressed, and introduced him to Mrs. D’Oyly 
Carte. She had managed a lecture tour for Forbes, now she agreed 
_ to arrange an evening for Whistler. She told us of his attention 
to detail. ‘The idea was absolutely his,” she wrote us, ‘ and all 
I did was to see to the business arrangements. You can imagine how 
1884] Q 241 


James McNeErLt WuHitsTLeR 


enthusiastic he was over it all, and how he made one enthusiastic too.” 
She was about to produce The Mikado, and, sure that he would find 
her in her office at the Savoy Theatre, he would appear there every 
evening to talk things over, or would send Mr. Walter Sickert with 
a message. Whistler delighted in her office, a tiny room lit by a lamp 
on her desk, making strange effects, but his only records of his many 
visits are in the etchings, Savoy Scaffolding and Miss Lenoir, Mrs. 
D’Oyly Carte’s name before her marriage. Prince’s Hall was taken. 


Whistler suggested the hour. People were not to rush to him from 
dinner as to the theatre ; therefore ten was as early as one could expect 
them, and the hour gave the name—The Ten O’Clock. He designed 
the ticket, he had it enlarged into a poster, he chose the offices where 
tickets should be sold. There was a rehearsal at Prince’s Hall on 
February 19 (1885), Mrs. D’Oyly Carte and some of the Followers 
sitting in front to tell him if his voice carried. Whistler had his lecture 
by heart, his delivery was excellent, he needed no coaching, only an 
occasional warning to raise his voice. It was because he feared his 
voice would not carry that he gave his nightly rehearsals on the 
Embankment, Mr. Menpes says. 

On February 20, 1885, the hall was crowded. Reporters expressed — 
242 [1885 


Tue Ten O’Ctocx 


the general feeling when they wondered whether “the eccentric 
artist was going to sketch, to pose, to sing, or to rhapsodise,” and were 
frankly astonished when the “amiable eccentric” chose to appear 
simply as “‘ a jaunty, unabashed, composed, and self-satisfied gentleman, 
armed with an opera hat and an eyeglass.” Others were amazed to 
see him “ attired in faultless evening dress.” The Followers compared 
the figure in black against the black background to the Sarasate, and 
they recall his hat carefully placed on the table and the long cane as 
carefully stood against the wall. Oscar Wilde called him “ a miniature 
Mephistopheles mocking the majority.”” The unprejudiced saw the 
dignity of his presence and felt the truth and beauty of his words. 
Mrs. Anna Lea Merritt writes us : 

* It is always a delight to remember that actually once Mr. Whistler 
was really shy. Those who had the pleasure of hearing the first 
Ten O'Clock remember that when he came before his puzzled and 
distinguished audience there were a few minutes of very palpable 
stage-fright.” 

He had notes, but he seldom referred tothem. He held his audience 
from the first, and Mrs. D’Oyly Carte recalled the hush in the hall 
when he came to his description of London transfigured, a fairyland in 
the night. ‘ I went to laugh and I stayed to praise,” is the late Lewis 
F, Day’s account to us, and others were generous enough to make the 
same admission. Whistler forced his audience to listen because he spoke 
with conviction. The Ten O’Clock was the statement of truths which 
his contemporaries were doing their best to forget. When we read 
it to-day, our surprise is that things so obvious needed saying. Yet 
the need exists to-day more than ever. Almost every one of Whistler’s 
propositions and statements has been traduced or ignored by critics, 
who are incapable of leading thought or are dealers in disguise, and 
painters compare their puny selves and petty financial scrapes to 
Whistler’s magnificent efforts and complete success in his battles for 
art and his reputation. 

To this lecture we owe the most interesting profession of artistic 
faith ever made by an artist. At the time it was given there was a 
reaction, outside the Academy, against the anecdote and sentiment 
of Victorian art. Ruskin through his books, the Pre-Raphaelites 
through their pictures, had spread the doctrine that art was a question 
1885] 243 


JAmeEs McNertLt WHISTLER 


of ethics and industry. Pater preached that it belonged to the past, 
William Morris taught that it sprang from the people and to the people 
must return. Strange, sad-coloured creatures clad themselves in strange, 
sad-coloured garments and admired each other. Many besides Oscar 
Wilde profitably peddled in the provinces what they prigged or picked 
up; artists proclaimed the political importance of art; parsons dis- 
covered in it a new salvation. “ Art was upon the town,” as Whistler 
said. But ethics and business, fashion and socialism had captured 
it. The Ten O’Clock was a protest against the crimes committed in 
the name of art, against the belief that art belonged to the past or 
concerned the people, that its object was to teach or to elevate. “ Art 
and Joy go together,” he said, the world’s masters were never reformers, 
never missionaries, but, content with their surroundings, found beauty 
everywhere. There was no great past, no mean present, for art, no 
drawing of lines between the marbles of the Greek and the fans and 
broideries of Japan. There was no artistic period, no art-loving 
people. Art happened, and, in a few eloquent words, he told the 
history of its happening and the coming of the cheap and tawdry, 
when the taste of the tradesman supplanted the science of the artist, 
and the multitude rejoiced. Art is a science—the science by which 
the artist picks and chooses and groups the elements contained in 
Nature, that beauty may result. For ‘‘ Nature is very rarely right, 
to such an extent even, that it might almost be said that Nature is 
usually wrong.” He has been so frequently misunderstood that it 
may be well to emphasise the meaning of these two assertions, the rock 
upon which his faith was founded. Art happens because the artist may 
happen anywhere at any time; art is a science not because painters 
maintain that it is concerned with laws of light or chemistry of colours 
or scientific problems, but because it is exact in its methods and in 
its results. The artist can leave no more to chance than the chemist 
or the botanist or the biologist. Knowledge may and does increase 
and develop, but the laws of art are unalterable. Because art is a science 
the critic who is not an artist speaks without authority and would 
prize a picture as a “‘ hieroglyph or symbol of story,” or for anything 
save the painter’s poetry which is the reason for its existence, “ the 
amazing invention that shall have put form and colour into such perfect 


harmony, that exquisiteness is the result.” The conditions of art — 


244 [1885 


SS 


PL eat ie Sh imi R A ues a TE 


Y 


Sf / MA 


THE BRIDGE 


204 


G. 


ETCHING. 


By permission of Messrs. Dowdeswell 


(See page 199) 


| AE Os ty et 
Kar ta Se 


yin he 


THE DOORWAY 
ETCHING. G. 188 


By permission of the Fine Art Society 
(See page 192) 


Tue Ten O’Crocx 


are degraded by these “‘ middlemen,” the critics, and by the foolish 
who would go back because the thumb of the mountebank jerked the 
other way. He laughed at the pretence of the State as fosterer of 
art—art that roams as she will, from the builders of the Parthenon 
to the opium-eaters of Nankin, from the Master at Madrid to Hokusai 
at the foot of Fusiyama. His denial of an artistic period or an art-loving 
people was his defence of art against those who would bound it by 
dates and confine it within topographical limits. He meant, not 
that a certain period might not produce artists and people to appreciate 
them, but that art is independent of time and place, “ seeking and 
finding the beautiful in all conditions and in all times, as did her 
high priest, Rembrandt, when he saw picturesque grandeur and noble 
dignity in the Jews’ quarter of Amsterdam, and lamented not that its 
inhabitants were not Greeks. 

“¢ As did Tintoret and Paul Veronese, among the Venetians, while not 
halting to change the brocaded silks for the classic draperies of Athens. 

“ As did, at the Court of Philip, Velasquez, whose Infantas, clad in 
inzesthetic hoops, are, as works of Art, of the same quality as the Elgin 
Marbles.” 

As did, he might have added, Whistler, during the reign of Victoria, in 
his portraits and Nocturnes which have carried on the art of the world. 

His argument was clear and his facts, misunderstood, are becoming 
the clichés of this generation. Critics, photographers, even Royal 
Academicians have appropriated the truths of The Ten O’Clock, for 
strange things are happening to the memory of the Idle Apprentice. 
He made his points wittily; he chose his words and rounded his 
sentences with the feeling for the beautiful that ruled his painting. 
The Ten O’Clock has passed into literature. Those Sunday wrestlings 
with Scripture in Lowell, that getting of the Psalms by heart at 
Stonington developed a style the literary artist may envy. This 
style in Art and Art Critics had its roughness. He pruned and chastened 
it in his letters to the papers, devoting infinite thought and trouble 
to them, for he, more than most men, believed that whatever he had 
to do was worth doing with all his might. He would write and rewrite 
them, and drive editors mad by coming at the busiest hour to correct 
the proof, working over it an hour or more, and then returning to 
change a word or a comma, while press and printers waited, and he 
1885] 245 


James McNeitu WuisTLER 


got so excited once he forgot his eyeglass—and the editor stole it, 
and, of course, later lost it. In his correspondence he was as scrupulous, 
and we have known him make a rough draft of a letter to his bootmaker 
in Paris, and ask us to dictate it to him while he wrote his fair copy, 
as a final touch addressing it to M. , Maitre Bottier. In The 
Ten O'Clock he brought his style to perfection. His philosophy, 
based on the eternal truths of art, was expressed with the beauty that 
endures for all time. 

The critics treated Whistler’s lecture as they treated his exhibitions. 
The Daily News was almost alone in owning that its quality was a 
surprise. The Times had the country with it when it said that “ the 
audience, hoping for an hour’s amusement from the eccentric genius 
of the artist, were not disappointed.” ‘The eccentric freak of an 
amiable, humorous, and accomplished gentleman,” was the Daily 
Telegraph’s opinion. Oscar Wilde, in the Pall Mall Gazette, was shocked 
that an artist should talk of art, and was unwilling to accept the fact 
that only a painter is a judge of painting. This was natural, for as 
an authority on art Wilde had made himself ridiculous. Nor could 
he assent to much that Whistler said, for, as a lecturer, he had been 
a perambulating advertisement for the esthetic movement, against 
which The Ten O’Clock was a protest. But he was more generous 
than other critics in acknowledging the beauty of the lecture and the 
earnestness of the lecturer, though he could not finish his notice without 
one parting shot at the man whose target he had often been: “ that he 
is indeed one of the very greatest masters of painting is my opinion. And 
I may add that, in this opinion, Mr. Whistler himself entirely concurs.” 
This was not the sort of thing Whistler could pass over. His answer led 
to a correspondence which made another chapter in The Gentle Art. 

Whistler repeated The Ten O’Clock several times; early in March 
before the British Artists, and later in the same month (the 24th) 
before the University Art Society at Cambridge, where he spent the 
night with Sir Sidney Colvin, who writes us, “‘ beyond the mere fact 
that Whistler dined with me in Hall and had some chat there with 
Prince Edward—an amiable youth who was a little scared at the idea 
of having to talk art (of which he was blankly ignorant) but whom 
Whistler soon put at his ease; I have no precise recollection of what 
passed.” What a pity! 

246 [1885 


Tue Ten O’Ciock 


On April 30 he gave his lecture at Oxford. Mr. Sidney Starr 
“went down with Whistler and his brother, ‘ Doctor Willie,’ to the 
Mitre. The lecture hall was small, with primitive benches, and the 
audience was small. The lecture was delivered impressively, but 
lacking the original emphasis and sparkle. Whistler hated to do 
anything twice over, and this was the fourth time.” 

The fifth time was about the same date, at the Royal Academy 
Students’ Club in Golden Square, an unexplained accident, and the 
sixth at the Fine Art Society’s. Dr. Moncure Conway wrote us a 
year before his death that he heard The Ten O’Clock at Lady Jeune’s, 
but Lady Jeune does not recollect it. Whistler we are sure would 
have remembered and recorded it. There was a suggestion, which 
came to nothing, of taking it on an American tour and to Paris. It 
was heard twice more in London, once at the Grosvenor Gallery in 
February 1888. Val Prinsep recalled Whistler’s “ pressing invita- 
tion ” for him and Leighton to attend: 

“‘ During the time he was president of the British Artists, he and 
the other heads of art sometimes were asked to dine by our President 
(Leighton). ‘ Rather late to ask me, don’t you think?’ Whistler 
remarked. After dinner, he pressed Leighton and me to come to his 
lecture, which was to be delivered a few days after. ‘ What’s the use 
of me coming?’ Leighton said sadly. ‘ You know I should not agree 
with what you said, my dear Whistler!’ ‘Oh,’ cried Whistler, ‘ come 
all the same ; nobody takes me seriously, don’t you know!’ ” 

It was heard for the last time three years later (1891) at the Chelsea 
Arts Club, which had just started and proposed to hold lectures and 
discussions ; it now gives fancy-dress balls and boxing matches. Before 
the club found a home it was suggested that the first of these meetings 
should be at the Cadogan Pier Hotel, and Whistler was invited to 
read The Ten O’Clock, but his answer was, ‘‘ No, gentlemen, let us go 
to no beer hotel,” and The Ten O’Clock was put off until the club- 
house in the King’s Road was opened. 

The Ten O’Clock, originally set up by Mr. Way, was published 
by Messrs. Chatto and Windus in the spring of 1888. It had much 
the same reception when it was printed as when it was delivered. The 
only criticism Whistler took seriously was an article by Swinburne 
in the Fortnightly Review for June 1888. 

1888] 247 


James McNertt WHIsTLER 


Swinburne objected to Whistler’s praise of Japanese art, to his 
rigid line between art and literature, to his incursion as “ brilliant 
amateur ”’ into the region of letters, to his denial of the possibility 
of an artistic period or an art-loving people, and to much else besides. 
All this might have passed, but Swinburne went further. He questioned 
the seriousness of Whistler. He twisted Whistler’s meaning to suit his 
weighty humour, and then, in a surprising vein of insolence, re-echoed 
the popular verdict. The witty tongue must be thrust into the smiling 
cheek, he thought, when Whistler wrote, ‘“‘ Art and Joy go together,” 
which meant, according to Swinburne, that tragic art is not art 
at all. 

“¢ Arter that, let’s have a glass of wine,’ said a famous countryman 
of Mr. Whistler’s, on the memorable occasion when he was impelled 
to address his friend Mr. Brick in the immortal words, ‘ keep cool, 
Jefferson, don’t bust.’ The admonition may not improbably be 
required by the majority of readers who come suddenly and unawares 
upon this transcendent and pyramidal pleasantry. The laughing muse 
of the lecturer, ‘ guam Focus circumvolat,’ must have glanced round in 
expectation of the general appeal, ‘ After that, let us take breath.’ 
And having done so, they must have remembered that they were not 
in a serious world; that they were in the fairyland of fans, in the 
paradise of pipkins, in the limbo of blue china, screens, pots, plates, 
jars, joss-houses, and all the fortuitous frippery of Fusiyama.” 

This is quoted as an example of Swinburnian humour. The rest 
of the article is offensive and ridiculous —the brilliant poet but 
ponderous prose writer trying to be funny—with references to the 
“‘ jester of genius,” to the ‘‘ tumbler or clown,” to the “ gospel of the 
grin.” It was this that hurt—that Swinburne, the poet, “ also mis- 
understood,” could laugh with the crowd at the “ eccentricity ” and 
levity of Whistler. Swinburne’s criticism was easy to answer, and 
was answered in two of the comments printed, with extracts from 
the article, in The Gentle Art. “ That tragic art is not art at all” 
is, Whistler wrote, Swinburne’s “ own ne ae and this 
Reflection appears on the opposite margin : 

“Ts not, then, the funeral hymn a gladness to the singer, if the 
verse be beautiful ? 

“Certainly the funeral monument, to be worthy the Nation’s 
248 [1888 


ae 


Tue Ten O’Ctocx 


sorrow buried beneath it, must first be,a joy to the sculptor who 
designed it. 

“The Bard’s reasoning is of the People. The Tragedy is theirs. 
As one of them the man may weep—yet will the artist rejoice, for to 
him is not ‘a thing of beauty a joy for ever’? ” 

To the World Whistler wrote the letter called “‘ Freeing a Last 
Friend ” in The Gentle Art. It is short, the sting in the concluding 
paragraph : 

“Thank you, my dear! I have lost a confrére; but then, I 
have gained an acquaintance—one Algernon Swinburne—‘ outsider ’ 
—Putney.” 

The letter was sent to Swinburne before it appeared in the World. 
We have been told that it was received at Putney one Sunday morning 
when Mr. Watts-Dunton was to breakfast with Whistler. Suspecting 
that the letter might not be friendly, Mr. Watts-Dunton took it, 
unopened, with him to Chelsea and begged Whistler to withdraw it. 
Whistler refused. Mr. Watts-Dunton left the house without break- 
fasting, and the same day the letter was delivered to Swinburne, who, 
after reading it, pale with rage, swore that never again would he speak 
to Whistler. As a result, Mr. Watts-Dunton, we believe, was at 
pains to avoid Whistler, fearful of a rupture with him. Mr. Meredith 
had discovered years before that the springs in Whistler were prompt 
for the challenge, and it cannot be denied that he had reason to see a 
challenge in Swinburne’s article. How much it hurt he did not conceal 
in The Gentle Art, where the extracts from Swinburne are followed 
immediately by Ht tu, Brute, and there is nothing more dignified, 
almost pathetic, in the volume : 

“«.,. Cannot the man who wrote Atalanta, and the Ballads 
Beautiful—can he not be content to spend his life with 41s work, which 
should be his love, and has for him no misleading doubt and darkness, 
that he should so stray about blindly in his brother’s flower beds and 
bruise himself! .. . 

“Who are you deserting your Muse, that you should insult my 
Goddess with familiarity, and the manners of approach common to 
the reasoners in the market-place ? ‘ Hearken to me,’ you cry, ‘ and 
I will point out how this man, who has passed his life in her 
worship, is a tumbler and a clown of the booths, how he who has 
1888] 249 


James McNertit WHIsTLER 


produced that which I fain must acknowledge, is a jester in the 
ring !’ 

“Do we not speak the same language? Are we strangers, then, 
or, in our Father’s house are there so many mansions that you lose 
your way, my brother, and cannot recognise your kin? .. . 

“You have been misled, you have mistaken the pale demeanour 
and joined hands for an outward and visible sign of an inward and 
spiritual earnestness. For you, these are the serious ones, and, for 
them, you others are the serious matter. Their joke is their work. 
For me—why should I refuse myself the grim joy of this grotesque 
tragedy—and, with them now, you are all my joke!” 

And Swinburne, in pitiful spite, we have been told, burned Whistler’s 
letters, and tried to sell La Mére Gérard which Whistler had given 
him. Later, Mr. Watts-Dunton is said to have stated that Whistler 
asked Swinburne to write the article, and also that he tried to make 
peace between them. 


CHAPTER XXIX: THE BRITISH ARTISTS 0ri ean. 
THE YEARS EIGHTEEN EIGHTY-FOUR TO EIGHTEEN 
EIGHTY-SIX. 


In the autumn of 1884, Whistler joined the Society of British Artists. 
Years later, when a British Artist was dining with us, Whistler came in. 
“A delightful evening,” he said, towards midnight, the British Artist 
having gone, “‘ but what was it for the British Artist sitting there, face 
to face with his late President ? ”? And then, he told us how he became 
connected with the Society : 

“‘ Well, you know, one day at my studio in Chelsea, a deputation 
arrived—Ayerst Ingram and one or two others. And there they were— 
and I received them charmingly, of course—and they represented to me 
that the British Artists’ was an old and distinguished Society, possibly 
as old as the Academy, and maybe older, and they had come to ask me 
if I would do them the honour of becoming a member. It was only 
right I should know that the Society’s fortunes were at a low ebb, but 
they wished to put new life into it. I felt the ceremony of the occasion. 
Whatever the Society was at the moment, it had a past, and they were | 
250 | [1884 


TueE Britisu ARTISTS 


there with all official authority to pay me a compliment. I accepted 
the offer with appropriate courtesy. As always, I understood the cere- 
monial of the occasion—and then, almost as soon as I was made a 
member I was elected President.” 

In the summer of 1906 Sir Alfred East, President of the British 
Artists, and the Council, with the courtesy Whistler would have 
approved, gave us permission to consult the minute-books. The first 
mention of Whistler is in the minutes of the half-yearly general meeting, 
November 21, 1884, held at the Suffolk Street Galleries, when it was 
proposed “ that Mr. Whistler be invited to join the Society as a member. 
A discussion took place concerning the law of electing Mr. Whistler 
by ballot, when it was proposed by Mr. Bayliss, seconded by Mr. 
Cauty, that the law relating to the election of members be suspended.” 
This was carried, and the Zimes (December 3, 1884) said: ‘“‘ Artistic 
society was startled by the news that this most wayward, most 
un-English of painters had found a home among the men of Suffolk 
Street, of all people in the world.” 

Whistler had never belonged to any society in England, and had 
never been asked, though we believe he was a Freemason; at any rate 
he had a pair of sleeve buttons with masonic emblems—apparently— 
on them. He was fifty, an age when most men have “ arrived” 
officially, if they “arrive” at all. Up to this moment he had stood 
apart from every school and group and movement in the country. He 
was as much a foreigner as when he came, a quarter of a century before, 
from Paris. He was a puzzle to the people, more American than 
English in appearance, manners, and standards. His short, slight 
figure, dark colouring and abundant curls, his vivacity of gesture, his 
American accent, his gaiety, his sense of honour, his quick resentment 
of an insult, were foreign and, therefore, to be suspected, and his per- 
sonality increased the suspicion with which his art was regarded. Recent 
writers have analysed his work and pointed out where it is American, 
French, Japanese. But to his contemporaries it did not matter 
what these tendencies were, the result was not English. His art, in 
its aims and methods, was different from theirs, to them he seemed in 
deliberate opposition, ruled by caprice, straining after novelty and 
notoriety. 

When Whistler came to England, art was the Academy, an Academy 
1884] 251 


James McNeitt WuIsTLER 


that had strangled the traditions of art and set up sentiment and 
anecdote. Wilkie explained the ideal of the nineteenth-century 
Academician when he said that “ to know the taste of the public—to 
learn what will best please the employer—is, to an artist, the most 
valuable of all knowledge” ; and the Royal Academy has only carried 
on the canny tradition. The classic machines of Leighton, Tadema, 
and Poynter appealed to the artless scholar; the idylls of Millais, 
Marcus Stone, and Leslie to the artless sentimentalist. Watts preached 
sermons for the artless serious, Stacy Marks raised a laugh in the artless 
humorist, Herbert and Long edified the artless pious. Every taste 
was catered to. Everybody could understand, and art had never been 
so popular in England. The Academy became a social power. As 
art was the last thing looked for on the walls, so the artist was the 
last thing looked for in the Academician. The situation is summed 
up in Whistler’s reply to a group of ladies who were praising 
Leighton : 

“‘He is such a wonderful musician! such a gallant colonel! such 
a brilliant orator! such a dignified President! such a charming host ! 
such an amazing linguist!” they chorused. “ H’m, paints, too, don’t 
he, among his other accomplishments ? ”” said Whistler. 

It was an extraordinary state of affairs. ‘“ Art,’ was little more 
than an excuse for intrigues and trivialities. Men who were thought 
daring in rebellion and leaders of secessions did not improve matters. 
The Pre-Raphaelites were absorbed in subject, though it was of another 
kind, and though they paid greater attention to technique and preached, 
as reformers always have, a return to Nature. Their insistence upon 
detail and finish, instead of opening their eyes, closed them more hope- 
lessly by making it a duty to see nothing save unimportant facts, and to 
copy these like a machine. The exception, Alfred Stevens, who neither 
stooped to the taste of public or patron, nor confused the artist with 
the missionary, was as complete a pariah as Whistler, and he died 
unknown and unrecognised. | 

The position in France was different. French officialism respected 
tradition. The art of the academic painters might be frigid, conven- 
tional, dull, but it was never petty and trivial, never strove to please 
by escape from drawing and colour. Gleyre, Ary Scheffer, Couture 
were the masters Whistler found in Paris. Their successors—Géroéme, — 
252 [1884 — 


THE BEGGARS 


ETCHING. G. 194 


By permission of the Fine Art Society 
(See page 199) 


(See page 199) 


THE RIALTO 


ETCHING. G,. 2II 


By permission of Messrs, Dowdeswell 


Tue Britisu ARTISTS 


Jean-Paul Laurens, Bouguereau, Bonnat—did not altogether throw 
their dignity as artists to the winds of popularity, or sacrifice it to 
social ambition. The rebels in France were not actuated by moral 
or literary motives, but broke away from conservatism. Rebellion sent 
Holman Hunt to Palestine, Rossetti to medizvalism, Burne-Jones to 
legend; it kept Courbet at home, for the true was the beautiful and 
truth was to be found in the life and the people about him. Moreover, 
the painter was to see these things through, not a microscope, but his 
eyes. No man who looks upon a broad landscape can count the blades 
of grass in a field, or the leaves of ivy on a wall, or the stars in the 
heavens ; the eye can take in only the whole, enveloped in atmosphere, 
bathed in light, shrouded in darkness, all things keeping their places in 
their planes. While in England the artist was searching the Scriptures 
and the Encyclopzdia for subject, in France he was training his eye to 
see things as they are and his hand to render them. This preoccupation 
with Nature, and the study of tone, gave artists new pictorial and 
technical problems, and subject counted for nothing except as an aid 
to their right solution. It is curious to contrast the work of the men 
in France and England of the same generation as Whistler. Fantin- 
Latour grouped his friends about the portrait of Delacroix, Leighton 
rearranged a procession of early Florentines carrying the Madonna of 
Cimabue through his idea of the streets. Manet noted the play of light 
and colour in the bull-rings of Spain, Tadema rebuilt on his canvas what 
he thought were the arenas of ancient Rome. Degas chose his models 
among the washerwomen and ballet-girls of modern Paris, Rossetti 
borrowing his subjects from Dante. 

Whistler, from his first picture, was as preoccupied with the beauty 
in the “ familiar” as his French fellow students. What might have 
happened had he remained in France, it is idle to discuss. Coming 
to England he developed in his own way, and this was a way with 
which English painters had no sympathy. He was so isolated that 
nothing has been more difficult for the historian of modern art than to 
place, to classify him. Some authorities have included him among 
the Realists. His work eventually differed from that of Courbet and 
Courbet’s disciples, but he was always as much a realist as they in his 
preference for the world in which he lived, and in his study of the 
relations of the things he found in it. He never wavered, except when 
1884] 253 


James McNertt WuisTLeR 


he painted the Japanese pictures, and then he was not led astray by 
anecdote or sentiment, but by the beauty that had drifted from Japan 
into his house and studio. London, dirty, gloomy, despised by most 
artists, with its little shops and taverns in the fog-bound streets; the 
Thames, with its ugly warehouses and gaunt factories in the mist-laden 
night; the crinolines of the sixties; the clinging, tight draperies of 
the seventies, became beautiful as he saw them. He made no effort 
to reform Nature, only reserving his right to select the elements 
that were beautiful and could be brought together, as notes in 
music, to create harmony, putting into practice his teaching of The 
Ten O’Clock. He sought colour, mass, not detail. The Pre-Raphaelites 
wanted to leave out less than a camera, he wanted to put in no more 
than came within his vision. He turned his back on history and 
archeology, and filled his canvas with beauty of line and form. And 
he struggled to perfect his technical methods, to make of them a perfect 
medium by which to express this beauty, to reconcile what he could see 
in Nature with what his brush could render. The Pre-Raphaelites 
laboured over their canvas, inch by inch; he painted his whole picture 
at once that unity might result. The Academicians lost their way in 
literary labyrinths; he lingered on the river, learning its secrets, 
he watched the movement, the pose of people about him. The modern 
exhibition forced most painters into violent colour and exaggerated 
action, he made no concession, though he was ready to submit his 
pictures to the same tests as theirs. 

It was inevitable that his English contemporaries could make 
nothing of him and his work. The Academician saw but emptiness in 
his paintings. To the Pre-Raphaelites they were slovenly and super- 
ficial. Holman Hunt said of him that he knew where to leave off, and 
was careful in the avoidance of difficulties ; Millais thought him “a 
great power of mischief among young men, a man who had never learnt 
the grammar of his art.” The critics took their cue from the painters, 
the more willingly because art criticism then meant analysis of the sub- 
ject of a picture, and there was no subject in Whistler’s work to analyse. 
Yet he never objected to subject. It was only the blind critics and 
the blind painters of the day who said he did, and their stupidity 
is still aped. The great pictures for him were Velasquez’s Menifias, 


Franz Hals’ Family, Tintoretto’s Milky Way: the greatest subject- — 


254 [1884 


Tue Britiso ARTISTS 


pictures in the world. All he objected to was the cheap drivel or 
sentiment of the painter whose mind or whose audience never rose 
above Mummie’s Darling or the Mustard Pot, the real British school 
trampled on by Hogarth. The public, following their leaders, were 
convinced that Whistler’s work was empty, slight, trivial, an insult 
to their intelligence, unless they took it as a jest. Nothing explains 
the popular conception of him better than the readiness to see eccentri- 
city even in methods which he, “‘ heir to all the ages,” had inherited. 
His long-handled brushes and his manner of placing sitter and canvas 
were eccentric, though they had been Gainsborough’s a century before. 
To say that a picture was finished from the beginning was no less eccen- 
tric, though it was Baudelaire’s axiom that the author foresees the last 
line of his work when he writes the first. It is easier to make than to 
lose the reputation for eccentricity, fatal to success in a land of conserva- 
tism. Whistler saw the Englishmen who had studied in Paris with him 
Jaden with honours ; Poynter a prosperous painter, Leighton a perfect 
President, Du Maurier the popular idol of Punch, Armstrong a State 
functionary at South Kensington, while he remained, officially, on the 
outside, at fifty less honoured than at twenty-five, because, it was said, 
that he had not realised the promise of his youth. 

In one respect his position had changed. His contemporaries did 
not alter their opinion, but younger artists accepted him and his 
teaching unquestioningly for a time. Though doubted and mistrusted, 
he had never been without influence. To look over old reviews and 
notices of exhibitions is to find references to the effect of his example. 
In the Art Fournal (June 1887), Sir Walter Armstrong traced the 
_ growing influence of French on English art to the Paris Universal 
Exhibition of 1867 and to Whistler. But artists of the new generation 
went further than the admission of his influence; with the enthusiasm 
of youth, they proclaimed his greatness. He was their master—the 
-ne master in England. After his return from Venice, when his 
fortunes were at their lowest and the public held him in most contempt, 
this enthusiasm began to make itself heard and felt in the studios and 
the schools. 

The British Artists, uncertain of their future, took desperate 
remedies. The Society was old, with distinguished chapters in its 


history. It was formed by one of the first groups who realised the 
1884] | 255 


James McNeitt WHuIsTLER 


necessity for an association in self-defence against the monopoly of 
the Academy. It dated back to the beginning of the nineteenth century. 
With the old Water Colour Society, it was considered only second in 
rank to the Academy. Its gallery was in Suffolk Street, near enough 
to the Academy to profit by any overflow of visitors, until the Academy 
moved from Trafalgar Square to Piccadilly. The old Water Colour 
Society was more independent, because it is devoted to a branch of art 
never acknowledged by the Academy, though every Academician tries 
to sneak in. But the British Artists suffered from this removal, and 
found a formidable rival in the Grosvenor Gallery. In Whistler, with 
his following, they seemed to see the man to drag them from the mire 
into which they had sunk. The older members hesitated—afraid of 
Whistler, afraid of the Academy, afraid of themselves. But the younger 
members carried the day. 

Whistler worked hard for the Society from his election till his 
resignation. He attended his first meeting on December 1, 1884, and 
interested himself immediately in the affairs of the Society, though, 
according to Mr. Ludovici, this was the last thing the Society expected 
of him. He promptly invited his President and fellow members to 
breakfast in Tite Street, and, as promptly, was put on a committee for a 
smoking concert, a dull and ponderous function. He sent to the Winter 
Exhibition (1884-85) two pictures, Arrangement in Black, No. II., the 
portrait of Mrs. Louis Huth, not exhibited in London since 1874, and a 
water-colour, 4 Little Red Note, Dordrecht ; in the Summer Exhibition 
(1885) he showed the Sarasate for the first time. Mr. Cole wrote in 
his diary : 

“ October 19th (1884). M. and I went to tea with Whistler to see 
his fine full-length of Sarasate, the violinist, for next year’s Academy.” 

But whatever his original intention may have been, the Sarasate 
went to Suffolk Street with several small Notes and Harmonies. If, 
in electing him, the British Artists hoped to attract attention to their 
exhibition, they were not disappointed. ‘‘ The eccentric Mr. Whistler 
has gone to a neglected little gallery, the British Artists, which he will 
probably bring into fashion,” Mr. (now Sir) Claude Phillips wrote in the 
Gazette des Beaux-Arts (July 1885), and this is what happened. The dis- 
tinction of the Sarasate could not be denied. But in his other work he 
was pronounced “ vastly amusing,” the Pall Mall Gazette seizing this — 
256 [1885 


- 


Tue Britisu ARTISTS 


occasion to remind him of “ Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes’ virtuous 
determination never to be as funny as he could. It is so bad for the 
young.” Soon Whistler proposed that Sunday receptions should be 
given in the gallery, and that medals should be awarded. He got 
Mr. Menpes in as a water-colourist, thus establishing distinct sections 
in the Society, a scheme he carried out in the International Society of 
Sculptors, Painters, and Gravers, and he suggested that photographs of 
pictures shown should be sold in the gallery, an idea copied all over 
the world. For the Winter Exhibition of 1885-86 he had another in- 
teresting group, including the Portrait of Mrs. Cassatt and a Note in 
Green and Violet. The Mrs. Cassatt has not been exhibited in England 
since, and is one of the least known of his portraits. Mr. Cassatt, who 
was among the few believers in Whistler at this period, came from Paris 
to London in April 1883, especially to have it painted, and was with 
Mrs, Cassatt during the sittings at 13 Tite Street. She has vivid 
memories of the brilliant talk between the two men. It is amusing that 
Whistler, after having told them the story of The Peacock Room, should 
have himself arranged for them to see it, and that then they heard 
Leyland’s story. Mrs. Cassatt wanted to be painted in an evening 
gown. Mr. Cassatt preferred her riding habit. ‘‘ The very thing,” 
said Whistler, and so in her riding habit and tall hat she stands on 
the canvas. Perhaps it was because of her disappointment that she 
could not see a likeness in the portrait. Whistler realised this, but, he 
told her, “* After all, it’s a Whistler.” Mr. Cassatt, punctilious in these 
matters, paid Whistler for the painting before he returned to America. 
Two years passed, and still no portrait. Whistler had probably kept 
it back for the British Artists. Mr. Cassatt at last wrote. They had 
their reward for the delay. A letter of apologies came from Whistler 
and was followed by a case, with not only the portrait in it, but The 
Chelsea Girl, a painting as little known, and now reproduced for the 
first time as far as we have record. 

At the British Artists’ the Note in Green and Violet, asmall pastel of a 
nude, created a far greater sensation than the portrait. About a month 
before the show opened, the late J. C. Horsley, R.A., had read, during a 
Church Congress, a paper no one would have given a thought to had not 
Whistler immortalised it. Horsley said : 

“If those who talk and write so glibly as to the desirability of 
1886] R ayfe 


James McNertLt WHIsTLER 


artists devoting themselves to the representation of the naked human 
form, only knew a tithe of the degradation enacted before the 
model is sufficiently hardened to her shameful calling, they would 
for ever hold their tongues and pens in supporting the practice. Is 
not clothedness a distinct type and feature of our Christian 
faith? All art representations of nakedness are out of harmony 
with it.” 

Whistler answered with “‘ one of the little things that Providence 
sometimes sent him”: “ Horsley soit qui mal y pense,” he wrote on a 
label, and fastened it to the Note in Green and Violet. The British 
Artists were alarmed, for to enter Suffolk Street was not to abandon 
hope of the Academy. The label was removed, not before it had been 
seen. The critic of the Pall Mall referred to it as Whistler’s “ indignant 
protest against the idea that there is any immorality in the nude.” 
Whistler, who knew when ridicule served better than indignation, 
wrote: ‘‘ Art certainly requires no ‘indignant protest’ against the 
unseemliness of senility. Horsley so1t qui mal y pense is meanwhile a 
sweet sentiment—why more—and why ‘ morality’? ” But the critic 
could not understand, and he was discovered one day “ walking in Pall 
Mall with the nude on his arm.” 

The revenue of the Society had been rapidly decreasing, a deficit of 
five hundred pounds had to be faced. To meet it Whistler proposed 
that the luncheon to the Press be discontinued. It was an almost 
general custom then to feast the critics at press views of picture exhibi- 
tions. But in few was the cloth more lavishly spread than at the 
British Artists’, in few were boxes of cigars and whiskies-and-sodas 
placed so conveniently. The younger critics resented it, the old ones 
lived for it. Press day, the dreariest in the year at the Royal Academy, 
was the most delightful at the British Artists’, they said. Mr. Sidney 
Starr tells a story of one, when Whistler had not hung his picture, but 
only the frame : 

“Telegrams were sent imploring the placing of the canvas. But 
the only answer that came was, ‘ The Press have ye always with you ; 
feed my lambs.’ A smoking-concert followed during the exhibition. 
At this, one critic said to the Master, ‘ Your picture is not up to your 
mark, it is not good this time.’ ‘ You should not say it isn’t good ; 


you should say you don’t like it, and then, you know, you’re perfectly _ 


258 | [1886 


“5 2 ee ee 


PORTRAITS OF MAUD 


OIL (DESTROYED) 


From photographs lent by Pickford R. Waller, Esq. 
(See page 206) 


RUAN 


JUBILEE MEMORIAL 


ILLUMINATION 
In the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle 
(See page 264) 


Tue Britisn ARTISTS 


safe ; now come and have something you do like, have some whisky,’ 
said Whistler.” 

In the place of the luncheon, Whistler suggested a Sunday breakfast 
when members should pay for themselves and their guests. But 
members were horrified ; his motion was lost. 

In April 1886, Mr. William Graham’s collection came up for auction 
at Christie’s. The sale brought to it the buyers and admirers of 
Rossetti, Burne-Jones, Holman Hunt, many of whose pictures Graham 
had bought. -Whistler’s Nocturne in Blue and Silver (Blue and Gold), 
Old Battersea Bridge belonged to him. When it appeared “ there was 
a slight attempt at an ironical cheer, which being mistaken for serious 
applause, was instantly suppressed by an angry hiss all round,” and it 
was sold for sixty pounds to Mr. R. H. C. Harrison. Whistler acknow- 
ledged through the Observer (April 11, 1886), “the distinguished, 
though I fear unconscious, compliment so publicly paid.” Such 
recognition rarely, he said, came to the painter during his lifetime, and 
to his friends he spoke of it as an unheard-of success, the first time such 
a thing had happened. The hisses in their ears, the British Artists were 
dismayed by his one contribution to the Summer Exhibition of 1886, 
This was a Harmony in Blue and Gold, a full-length of a girl in draperies 
of blue and green, leaning against a railing and holding a parasol, an 
arrangement, like the Six Projects, uniting classic design with Japanese 
detail. The draperies were transparent, and to defy Horsley and the 
British Matron was no part of the British Artists’ policy. They were 
doubtless the more shocked when they read the comments in the Press. 
The most amusing revelation of British prudery, worth preserving as 
typical, appeared in the Court and Society Review (June 24, 1886) in 
a letter, signed ‘‘ A Country Collector,” protesting against the praise 
of Mr. Malcolm Salaman, who was the art critic of that paper : 

“‘ T am invited to gaze at an unfinished, rubbishy sketch of a young 
woman, who, if she is not naked, ought to be, for she would then be 
more decent. ... The figure is more naked than nude: the colour 
what there is of it, is distinctly unpleasant. For my part, sir, I will 
not believe in Mr. Whistler; my daughters have commanded me to 
admire him—I will not admire him. How they can quietly stare at the 
ill-painted, sooty-faced young woman in ‘ blue and gold’ passes me. 
But things are altered now, and my girls gaze with critical calmness 
1886] 259 


James McNertt WuisTLerR 


and carefully balanced pince-nez on that which would have sent their 
grandmothers shrieking from the gallery.” 

And Whistler, he declared, was a “ poseur ’ 
colossal piece of pyramidal impudence.” 

Whistler was not represented at the Grosvenor, and at the Salon 
only by the Sarasate, which went afterwards to the “ XX” Club in 
Brussels. His show in 1886 was at Messrs. Dowdeswell’s Gallery. 
They exhibited and published for him the Set of Twenty-Six Etchings, 
twenty-one of the plates done in Venice, the other five in England, 
the price fifty guineas. With the prints he issued the often-quoted 
Propositions, the first series ; the laws, as he defined them, of etching. 
He said that in etching, as in every other art, the space covered should 
be in proportion to the means used for covering it, and that the delicacy 
of the needle demands the smallness of the plate; that the “ Remarque,” 
then in vogue, emanated from the amateur; that there should be no 
margin to receive a “ Remarque”; and that the habit of margin also 
came from the outsider. For a few years these Propositions were 
accepted by artists. At the present time they are ignored or defied, 
and the bigger the plate the better pleased is the etcher and his public. 
Later in the year, in May, Messrs. Dowdeswell arranged in their gallery 
a second series of Notes—Harmonies—Nocturnes. A few were in oil, 
a few in pencil, but the larger number were pastels and water-colours. 
They were studies of the nude, impressions of the sea at Dieppe and 
Dover, St. Ives and Trouville, the little shops of London and Paris, the 
skies and canals of Holland. Whistler decorated the room in Brown and 
Gold, choosing the brown paper for the walls, designing the mouldings 
of the dado. Mr. Walter Dowdeswell has the sketch of the scheme 
in raw umber, yellow ochre, raw sienna, and white; he has also 
preserved the brown-and-yellow hangings, and the yellow velarium. 
On the cover for the mantelpiece, the Butterfly, placed to one side, 
is without a sting. ‘‘ Where is the sting?” Mr. Dowdeswell asked. 
“That,” Whistler said, “is in my waistcoat pocket. I am keeping 
it for the critics.” The exhibition was received with mingled praise 
and blame, and it would not have been a success financially had not 
Mr. H. S. Theobald, K.C., purchased all that earlier buyers left on 
Messrs. Dowdeswell’s hands. 

In the following summer Mr. Burr refused to stand again for the 
260 [1886 


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and the picture “a 


Tue Britisu ARTISTS 


Presidency, and at a General Meeting (June 1, 1886), Whistler was 
elected. The excitement was intense. Whistler alone was calm and 
unmoved. Mr. Ingram, a scrutineer, remembers coming for Whistler’s 
vote and being so excited that Whistler tried to reassure him: ‘“ Never 
mind, never mind, you’ve done your best!” The meeting adjourned 
to the Hogarth Club for supper. “ fy suis, j’y reste,” Whistler wired 
his brother. The comic papers were full of caricatures, the serious 
papers of astonishment. He was hailed as “ President Whistler” by 
his friends, and denounced by members of the Society as an artist with 
no claim to be called British. Younger painters rushed to his support, 
and one French critic, Marcel Roland, prophesied that, “Vauvre de 
Whrstler ne quittera son atelier que pour aller tout droit Sennuyer 4 jamais 
sur les murs des grandes salles du Louvre. La place est marquée entre 
Paul Véronese et Vélasquez.” It was suggested by Mr. Malcolm 
Salaman that “ all the rising young painters to whom we must look for 
the future of British art will flock to the standard of Mr.—why not Sir 
James—Whistler, rather than to that of Sir Frederick Leighton ”— 
a prophecy fulfilled in the early days of the International, while the 
question as to whether Whistler would have accepted a knighthood 
has lately been discussed. He would doubtlessly, could he have done 
so without losing his American citizenship, but he would not have 
sold his citizenship for it. Honorary rank and British orders could have 
been conferred upon him, as they are often upon foreign politicians, 
social nonentities, or useful financiers without loss of their citizenship. 
But in British orders, as Lord Melbourne said of the Garter, “‘ there 
is no damn question of merit about it.” 

Whistler intended going to America in the fall, but the journey was 
postponed. He wrote to the World (October 13, 1886), “ this is no 
time for hesitation—one cannot continually disappoint a Continent,” 
and he settled down to the task of directing the fortunes of a Society 
which looked to him for help, its members divided among themselves 
in their confidence in him as President. 


1886] 261 


James McNeitt WuIsTLER 


CHAPTER XXX : THE BRITISH ARTISTS. THE FALL. THE 
YEARS EIGHTEEN EIGHTY-SIX TO EIGHTEEN EIGHTY- 
EIGHT. 


Accorpine to the constitution of the British Artists the President, 
though elected in June, does not take office until December. Whistler 
presided for the first time on December 10, 1886, and from that day 
he was supported devotedly by one faction and opposed fiercely by the 
other. 

For the Winter Exhibition (1886-87) he decorated the galleries with 
the same care as his own shows. He put up a velarium, he covered the 
walls with muslin. The muslin gave out, leaving a bare space under 
the ceiling. ‘But what matter?” he said, “the battens are well 
placed, they make good lines,” and they became part of the decoration. 
He would allow no crowding, the walls were to be the background of 
good pictures well spaced, well arranged. He urged the virtue of 
rejection. Mr. Starr says, ‘‘ He was oblivious to every interest but 
the quality of the work shown.” He told Mr. Menpes, one of the 
Hanging Committee, “If you are uncertain for a moment, say ‘ Out.’ 
We want clean spaces round our pictures. We want them to be seen. 
The British Artists’ must cease to be a shop.” 

This was resented. The modern exhibition is a shop, and as long 
as most painters have their way a shop it will remain. He exhibited 
Nocturne in Brown and Gold (afterwards Blue and Gold), St. Mark’s, 
V enice—he told the members on varnishing day that it was his best ; 
Harmony in Red : Lamplight, Mrs. Godwin, and Harmony in White and 
Ivory, Lady Colin Campbell, a beautiful portrait of a beautiful woman, 
one of many that have disappeared. It was not finished when Whistler 
sent lt in, an excuse for dissatisfied members to propose its removal. 
The question was not put to the meeting when the matter came up, 
but a proposition to define the rights of the President and the President- 
elect was carried. 

One of Whistler’s first acts was to offer to loan the Society five 
hundred pounds to pay its debts. Mr. Starr describes him, “ during 
this time of fluctuating finances, pawning his large gold Salon medal 


one day, lending five hundred pounds to the British Artists the next. 


262 _ [1887 


Tue Britisn ARTISTS 


He often found ‘ a long face and a short account at the Bank,’ he said 
one day.” 

He did everything he could to increase the prestige of the Society. 
All that was charming was to be encouraged, all that was tedious was 
to be done away with. He got distinguished artists to join: Charles 
Keene, Alfred Stevens, and the more promising younger men. He 
allowed several to call themselves in the catalogue “ pupils of Whistler,” 
and to make drawings of the gallery and his pictures for the illustrated 
papers. The sketches of Sarasate in the Pall Mall's Pictures of 1885, 
and of Harmony in Blue and Gold, and his exhibition at Dowdeswell’s 
gallery in Pictures of 1886 are by him. But after this Mr. Theodore 
Roussel, Mr. Walter Sickert, Mr. Sidney Starr made the drawings for 
reproduction. He gave the Art Union, organised by the Society, a 
plate, The Fish Shop—Busy Chelsea, one year, and another, a painting 
done at St. Ives. In the March meeting (1887) he proposed a limit of 
size for exhibits, he contributed twenty pounds towards a scheme of 
decoration, and he presented four velvet curtains for the doorways in 
the large room. There is a drawing, showing curtains and velarium, 
by Mr. Roussel in the Pall Mail’s Pictures of 1887. Whistler’s early 
Nocturne in Blue and Gold, Valparaiso Bay; Nocturne 1n Black 
and Gold, The Gardens (Cremorne); Harmony in Grey, Chelsea in 
Ice, were hung, and with them his latest, Arrangement in Violet 
and Pink, Portrait of Mrs. Walter Sickert. ‘This is the first of the two 
portraits he painted of Mrs. Sickert, and from her we learned that it 
was destroyed. 

Most of the members regarded the President’s innovations as an 
interference with their rights. He might pay their debts, that was one 
thing ; it was another to make their gallery beautiful by chucking their 
pictures. Their resentment increased on the occasion of a visit from 
the Prince of Wales. Whistler stayed late the day before to finish the 
decoration. When the members came, doors and dados were painted 
yellow. Whistler, with whom great fault was found, refused to have 
anything further to do with the decorations, though they were un- 
finished. There was fright carried that evening to a smoking-concert at 
the Hogarth Club, where everybody was talking of the arrangement in 
yellow. He was telegraphed for. ‘‘So discreet of you all at the 
Hogarth” was his answer, and he did not appear until it was time 
1887] | 263 


James McNeritit WuisTLeR 


to meet the Prince, though in the meantime members tried to tone 
down the yellow. Whistler told us: 

‘“‘T went downstairs to meet the Prince. As we were walking up, 
I a little in front with the Princess, the Prince, who always liked to be 
well informed in these matters, asked what the Society was—Was it 
an old institution? What was its history? ‘Sir, it has none, its 
history dates from to-day !’ I said.” | 

But the old members say that when the Prince went downstairs 
with one of them his remark was: ‘‘ Who is that funny little man we 
have been talking to? ” 

The dissatisfaction was brought before a meeting, when a proposition 
was made and passed “ that the experiment of hanging pictures in an 
isolated manner be discontinued,” and that, in future, enough works 
be accepted to cover the vacant space above and below the line—in fact, 
that the gallery be hung as before. It is said that some members made 
an extimate of the amount of wall-space left bare, and calculated the 
loss in pounds, shillings and pence. 

We saw this exhibition, though we did not see Whistler. We 
remember the quiet, well-spaced walls, and the portrait of Mrs. Sickert, 
also works by Dannat and William Stott. It should not be forgotten 
that the British Artists’ was arranged and hung by Whistler years before 
there was any idea of artistic hanging in German Secessions—we believe, 
before there were any Secessions. Whistler had applied to his own 
shows the same method of spacing and hanging, and decorating the 
walls with an appropriate colour-scheme. It had occurred to no one 
before him that beautiful things should be shown beautifully, and it is 
not too much to say that the attention given to-day to the artistic 
arrangement of picture exhibitions is due entirely to Whistler. The 
resurrection of the velarium, designed, made, and hung after his scheme, 
has revolutionised the lighting of picture galleries, though in very few 
is his scheme intelligently followed. 

1887 was Queen Victoria’s Jubilee, and every society of artists 
prepared addresses to Her Majesty; Whistler could not permit his 
Society to appear less ceremoniously loyal. His account to us was: 

“Well, you know, I found that the Academy and the Institute and 
the rest of them were preparing addresses to the Queen, and so I went 
to work too, and I prepared a most wonderful address. Instead of 
264. [1887 


Tue Britisu ARTISTS 


the illuminated performances for such occasions, I took a dozen folio 
sheets of my old Dutch paper. I had them bound by Zaehnsdorf. 
First came the beautiful binding in yellow morocco and the inscription 
to Her Majesty, every word just in the right place—most wonderful. 
You opened it, and on the first page you found a beautiful little drawing 
of the royal arms that I made myself; the second page, an etching of 
Windsor, as though ‘ there’s where you live!’ On the third page the 
address began. I made decorations all round the text in water-colour, 
at the top the towers of Windsor, down one side a great battleship 
plunging through the waves, and below, the sun that never sets on the 
British Empire—What? ‘The following pages were not decorated, 
just the most wonderful address, explaining the age and dignity of the 
Society, its devotion to Her Glorious, Gracious Majesty, and suggesting 
the honour it would be if this could be recognised by a title that would 
show the Society to belong specially to Her. Then, the last page; you 
turned, and there was a little etching of my house at Chelsea—‘ And 
now, here’s where I live!’ And then you closed it, and at the back 
of the cover was the Butterfly. This was all done and well on its way 
and not a word was said to the Society, when the Committee wrote and 
asked me if I would come to a meeting as they wished to consult me. 
It was about an address to Her Majesty—all the other Societies were 
sending them—and they thought they should too. I asked what they 
proposed spending—they were aghast when I suggested that the guinea 
they mentioned might not meet a twentieth of the cost. But, all the 
time, my beautiful address was on its way to Windsor, and finally came 
the Queen’s acknowledgment and command that the Society should 
be called Royal—I carried this to a meeting and it was stormy. One 
member got up and protested against one thing and another, and 
declared his intention of resigning. ‘ You had better make a note of 
it, Mr. Secretary,’ I said. And then I got up with great solemnity, 
and I announced the honour conferred upon them by Her Gracious 
Majesty, and they jumped up and they rushed towards me with out- 
stretched hands. But I waved them all off, and I continued with the 
ceremonial to which they objected. For the ceremonial was one of 
their grievances. They were accustomed to meet in shirt-sleeves— 
free-and-easy fashion which I would not stand. Nor would I consent 
to what was the rule and tradition of the Society. I would not, when 
1887] 265 


James McNeritt WuisTLeR 


I spoke, step down from the chair and stand up in the body of the 
meeting, but I remained always where I was. But, the meeting over, 
then I sent for champagne.” 

Whistler, as President of the British Artists, was invited to the 
Jubilee ceremonies in Westminster Abbey, and in Mr. Lorimer’s painting 
he may be seen on one side of the triforium, Leighton on the other. 
Fubilee in the Abbey, an etching, gives his impressions. He was asked 
also to the State garden-party at Buckingham Palace, and to the Naval 
Review off Spithead, when he made the Naval Review series of plates 
and at least one water-colour in a day. Naturally, when the Royal 
Academy neglected to invited him to their soirée, though hitherto they 
had always invited the President of the British Artists, he resented it 
as an insult not only to himself, but to the Society. ‘“ It really was a 
pretty little recognition of my own personality beneath the cloak of 
office,” he wrote in an often-quoted letter to Leighton, then President of 
the Royal Academy. 

The year before, Mr. Ayerst Ingram had proposed that the Society 
should give a show of the President’s work to precede their Summer 
Exhibition of 1887. This had met with so many objections that 
though the motion was not withdrawn as Whistler wanted, it was 
dropped. After the new honours were obtained by him for the Society, 
and while he was travelling in Belgium and Holland, an effort was made 
to revive the scheme. Mr. Ingram did what he could. Mr. Walter 
Dowdeswell acted as honorary secretary, guarantors were found, owners 
of pictures were written to. February and March 1888 was the time 
appointed, but Whistler doubted the sincerity of the Society and would 
not risk anything less than an “ absolute triumph of perfection ” for an 
undertaking made in the name of the British Artists or his own. To 
him no success was worse than failure. At the end of September 


nothing definite had been arranged, and Whistler told Mr. Ingram — 


that his “‘ solitary evidence of active interest could hardly bring about 
a result sufficient to excuse such an eleventh-hour effort.” 

He was right. The opposition in the Society was strong, and many 
members were in open warfare with their President. They refused 


to support him in his proposition that no member of the Society should 


be, or should remain, a member of any other Society, and when he fol- — 


lowed this with the proposition that no member of the Royal Society of — 
266 [1887 


EH, « 


Ne 


Tue Britisu ARTISTS 


British Artists who was a member of any other Society should serve 
on the Selecting or Hanging Committee, they again defeated him. 
Nor did they persuade him to reconsider the formal withdrawal, on 
November 18, of his permission to show his works. He sent, however, 
several water-colours and the twelve etchings of the Naval Review to 
the Winter Exhibition (1887-88), and four lithographs from the Art 
Notes published that autumn by the Goupils. They were described 
in the Magazine of Art (December 1887) as mere lead pencil “ notes 
reproduced in marvellous facsimile,” which gave Whistler his chance 
for a courteous reminder in the World to “the bewildered one.” 
The critic might inquire, he said; “the safe and well-conducted 
one informs himself.” Within the Society he had once more 
to contend against the opposition to his hanging and spacing, and 
a fresh grievance was that space was filled with the work of Monet, 
as yet hardly known in England. One of the older members, when he 
looked at Whistler’s Red Note, declared, “‘ If he can do that, D’ll forgive 
him—he can do anything.” But few could forgive so easily. They 
objected that “ Whistler would have his way, and didn’t mind if he 
made enemies in getting it,” and they began to whisper that in the 
matter of the memorial he had been dictatorial. The situation is best 
described in the words of Mr. Holmes to us: “ With a little more of 
Disraeli and a little less of Oliver Cromwell, Whistler would have 
triumphed.” 

The crisis came in April 1888, before the Summer Exhibition. It 
was suggested that the Council communicate with the President as to 
the removal of temporary decorations which he had designed and they 
had paid for. One decoration the Society did not object to was a 
velarium, since it meant no loss of wall-space, and when Whistler re- 
moved this they ordered a new one. Whistler, through his secretary, ex- 
plained to the Committee that the velarium was his patent—“ a patent 
taken out by the Greeks and Romans” is Mr. Ingram’s comment. 
Whistler got out an injunction ; when the Committee, with their order 
for the velarium, hurried to Hampton’s shop, his secretary was at their 
heels in a hansom with the injunction ; the secretary arrived with them 
at Liberty’s, but somehow they managed, in the end, to evade him. A 
velarium was made and put up, and they proceeded to get rid of their 
President. At a meeting on May 7 a letter, signed by eight members 
1888 | 267 


James McNeitt WuistLerR 


whose names do not appear in the minutes, was read, asking President 
Whistler to call a meeting to request Mr. James A. McNeill Whistler 
to resign his membership in the Society, and he called the meeting and 
signed the minutes. The President made a speech, in which he claimed 
that his action in the matter of the velarium was not inimical to the 
welfare of the Society, but the speech was not recorded. He permitted 
no one to speak in opposition, and the subject was dropped. At the 
special meeting called by him the same month there was an exhaustive 
discussion. Whistler declared his position. His opponents presented 
an array of lawyer’s letters, which they said showed that Whistler had 
threatened injunctions, had greatly impeded the Executive in the 
decoration of the galleries, and had influenced many distinguished 
people to keep away from the private view. A vote was taken for his 
expulsion, though Mr. Ingram proposed a vote of censure in its place. 
Whistler refused at first to put the motion to expel himself, but finally 
was compelled to doso. There were eighteen votes for, nineteen against 
it, and nine members did not vote. The votes, Whistler said, when he 
addressed the meeting after the ballot, showed that the Society ap- 
proved of his action. Mr. Francis James at once proposed a vote of 
censure on those who had signed the letter, but this was not carried. 
On June 4, at the annual election, when a whip had been sent round to 
all members, Wyke Bayliss was elected President, and Whistler resigned 
from the Society, congratulating the members on the election: ‘‘ Now, 
at last, you must be satisfied. You can no longer say you have the 
right man in the wrong place!” 

Mr. Starr recalls his saying: “‘ Now I understand the feelings of all 
those who, since the world began, have tried to save their fellow men.” 

The minority resigned, as Mr. Menpes, foreseeing the inevitable, 
had a month earlier, which led to Whistler’s comment on “ the early 
rat who leaves the sinking ship.” All who had joined the Society with 
him left it with him, and he said “ the Artists came out and the British 
remained.” 

Mr. Menpes describes a supper of the Artists after the meeting 
at the Hogarth Club. He says he was taken back into favour, and 
joined the party. ‘“‘ What are you going to do with them all?” he 
asked. ‘* Lose them,” said Whistler. But he did not lose them all. 
One or two stayed by him to the end. 

268 | [1888 


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Whistler, according to the constitution, held office till December, 
and till December he retained his post. During this time there were 
meetings. At one he addressed Bayliss as Baily—to his disgust— 
but, on this occasion at least, Bayliss had an idea and replied, “ Yes, 
Mr. Whistle!” At a meeting on November 28 Whistler made a 
statement of his relations with the Society, and his objects and aims 
concerning it, only referred to in the minutes, and he gave up the chair 
to Wyke Bayliss. He had been President two years, a member four. 
After November 28, 1888, his name appears in the official records only 
twice: first on January 4, 1889, in connection with a dispute over 
the notice board outside the gallery, and then on July 20, 1903, when 
Wyke Bayliss stated ‘‘ that, acting on the feeling that it would be the 
wish of the Society, he had ordered a wreath to be sent in the name 
of the Society on the occasion of the funeral of Mr. Whistler.” 

The newspapers were not so shy of the President as the minute- 
books. The difference between Whistler and the Society found the 
publicity which he could never escape. He said to the men who resigned 
with him, “ Come and make history for posterity,” and, as usual, he saw 
that the record was accurate. He had hardly left the Society when the 
notice board, with the Butterfly and the lion which he had painted, 
was altered; he immediately wrote a letter to state the fact in the 
Pall Mall Gazette. Reporters and interviewers gave the British 
Artists’ reasons for their late President’s resignation and his successor’s 
qualifications for the post. Whistler lost no time in explaining his 
position, and giving his estimate of the new President. It cannot be 
said too often that his letters to the Press, criticised as trivial and un- 
dignified, were written deliberately that “ history might be made.” 
Many pages of The Gentle Art are filled with his relations with the 
British Artists. The gaiety of his letters was mistaken for flippancy, 
because the more solemn and ponderous the “‘ enemies ” became, the 
more “ joyous ” he grew in disposing of them. He did not spare the 
British Artists. The Pall Mall undertook to describe the disaster of 
the “‘ Whistlerian policy ” in Suffolk Street by statistics and to extol the 
strength of Wyke Bayliss : | 

“The sales of the Society during the year 1881 were under five 
thousand pounds; 1882, under six thousand; 1883, under seven 
thousand; 1884, under eight thousand; 1885 (the first year of Mr. 
1888] | 269 


James McNeitt WuisTLeR 


Whistler’s rule), they fell to under four thousand; 1885, under three 
thousand; 1887, under two thousand; and the present year, 1888, 
under one thousand. ... The new President ...is... the hero 
of three Bond Street ‘ one-man exhibitions,’ a board-school chairman, a 
lecturer, champion chess-player of Surrey, a member of the Rochester 
Diocesan Council, a Shakespearean student, a Fellow of the Society of 
Cyclists, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquarians, and public orator 
of Noviomagus.” 

Whistler’s answer, serious in intention, gay in wording, pointed 
out “ the, for once, not unamusing ‘ fact ’ that the disastrous and simple 
Painter Whistler only took in hand the reins of government at least 
a year after the former driver had been pitched from his box and half 
the money-bags had been already lost! From eight thousand to four 
thousand at one fatal swoop! and the beginning of the end had set 
in! ... ‘Four thousand pounds!’ down it went; three thousand 
pounds, two thousand pounds—the figures are Wyke’s—and this 
season, the ignominious ‘ one thousand pounds or under’ is none of my 
booking! And when last I saw the mad machine it was still cycling 
down the hill.” 

Whistler was disappointed, though he did not show it. He was 
seldom invited to join anything, nor did he rush to accept the rare 
invitation. He would take no part in the Art Congress started in the 
eighties, despite an effort to entangle him; he would do no more than 
“‘ bestow his benison”’ upon the movement in 1886 to organise a National 
Art Exhibition, led by Walter Crane, Holman Hunt, and George 
Clausen. But to the British Artists he had given his time and energy 
during four years, he had dragged the Society out of the slough in 
which it was floundering and made its exhibitions the most distinguished 
and most talked-about in London. Wyke Bayliss, who never under- 
stood him, wrote: ‘‘ Whistler’s purpose was to make the British Artists 
a small, esoteric set; mine was to make it a great guild of the working 
artists of this country.” 

Whistler said: ‘‘ I wanted to make the British Artists an art centre; 
they wanted to remain a shop.” . 

Wyke Bayliss and his successor were knighted, as Presidents of 
Royal Societies usually are; Whistler, who obtained the title and 
charter of the Society, was ignored. 
270 [1888 


MARRIAGE 


Ten years later, as President of the International Society of Sculp- 
tors, Painters, and Gravers, he not only recommended, but carried out 
his schemes and theories: the decoration of the galleries, the refusal of 
bad work no matter who sent it, the proper hanging of the pictures 
accepted, the making of the exhibitions into artistic events, the inter- 
esting of the public in them, the insistence that each artist should only 
support his own Society’s exhibitions and should belong to no other 
Society. He was dictatorial, but without a dictator nothing can be 
done, and at the British Artists’ each British Artist wanted to lead. 
His Presidency began in mistrust and ended in discord. For Whistler 
it had an advantage, especially abroad, where artists began to regard 
him with deference. 


CHAPTER XXXI: MARRIAGE. THE YEAR EIGHTEEN 
EIGHTY-EIGHT. 


“T pon’r marry,” Whistler said, “ though I tolerate those who do.” 
But before he left the British Artists’ he did marry. His wife was 
Beatrix Godwin, widow of E. W. Godwin, the architect of the White 
House and for years Whistler’s champion in the Press. Godwin died 
on October 6, 1886, and Whistler married on August I1, 1888. 

Mrs. Whistler was the daughter of John Birnie Philip, remembered 
as one of the sculptors who worked on the awful Albert Memorial. 
She was large, so that Whistler was dwarfed beside her, dark and hand- 
some, more foreign in appearance, but not in person, than English. 
Whistler delighted in a tradition that there was gipsy blood in her 
family. She had studied art in Paris and with him, and he was proud 
of her as a pupil. Her work included several decorative designs, and 
a series of etchings made to illustrate the English edition of Van Eeden’s 
Little Fobannes. Only a few of the plates were finished, and of these 
some proofs were shown in the first exhibition of the International 
Society and in the Paris Memorial Exhibition, while Mr. Heinemann 
had the intention of publishing a series of illustrations which she and 
Whistler drew on the wood. 

Mr. Labouchere held himself responsible for the marriage, and 
told the story in Truth (July 23, 1903) : 

1888] 271 


James McNett WuisTLEeR 


“I believe that I am responsible for his marriage to the widow 
of Mr. Godwin, the architect. She was a remarkably pretty woman 
and very agreeable, and both she and he were thorough Bohemians. 
I was dining with them and some others one evening at Earl’s Court. 
They were obviously greatly attracted to each other, and in a vague 
sort of way they thought of marrying. So I took the matter in hand 
to bring things to a practical point. ‘ Jemmy,’ I said, ‘ will you marry 
Mrs. Godwin?’ ‘Certainly,’ he replied. ‘Mrs. Godwin,’ I said, 
‘will you marry Jemmy?’ ‘Certainly,’ she replied. ‘When?’ I 
asked. ‘Oh, some day,’ said Whistler. ‘That won’t do,’ I said, 
‘we must have a date.’ So they both agreed that I should choose the 
day, what church to come to for the ceremony, provide the clergyman, 
and give the bride away. I fixed an early date, and got the then 
Chaplain of the House of Commons [the Rev. Mr. Byng] to perform 
the ceremony. It took place a few days later. 

“‘ After the ceremony was over, we adjourned to Whistler’s studio, 
where he had prepared a banquet. The banquet was on the table, 
but there were no chairs. So we sat on packing-cases. The happy 
pair, when I left, had not quite decided whether they would go that 
evening to Paris or remain in the studio. How unpractical they were 
was shown when I happened to meet the bride the day before the 
marriage in the street : 

““* Don’t forget to-morrow,’ I said. ‘No,’ she replied, ‘I am 
just going to buy my trousseau.’ ‘A little late for that, is it not ?” 


I asked. ‘ No,’ she answered, ‘ for I am only going to buy a new tooth- 


brush and a new sponge, as one ought to have new ones when one 


marries.’ ”’ 


The wedding took place at St. Mary Abbott’s, Kensington, in the } 


presence of Dr. and Mrs. Whistler, one of Mrs. Godwin’s sisters, 


Mrs. Whibley, and three or four others. Mr. Labouchere gave the © 


bride away and Mr. Jopling-Rowe was best man. Whistler had recently 


left 454 Fulham Road and the Vale, with its memories of Maud, for 


the Tower House, Tite Street, and the suddenness of his marriage 
gave no time to put things in order. There were not only packing- 


cases in the dining-room—usually one of the first rooms furnished in — 


every house he moved into—but the household was in most respects 


unprepared for the reception of a bride. The wedding breakfast 
272 [1888 


* 


. 


4 


« 
- 
‘ 


MARRIAGE 


was ordered from the Café Royal, and the bride’s sister hurriedly got 
a wedding cake from Buszard’s. 

The rest of the summer and autumn was spent in France, part of 
the time in Boulogne. Mr. and Mrs. Cole, on 

“ August 27 (1888). Met Jimmy and his wife on the sands: they 
came up with us to Rue de la Paix, down to bathe. Jimmy sketching 
on sands; the W.’s turned up after lunch. With Jimmy to the iron 
and rag marché near Boulevard Prince Albert [no doubt in search of 
old paper as well as of subjects]. He sketched (water-colours) a dingy 
shop. Later we dined with them at the Casino. Pleasant parti a 
quatre. Jimmy in excellent form. Leaving to-morrow.” 

From Boulogne they went to Touraine, stopping at Chartres, 
most of the time lost to their friends, as they intended to be lost. It 
was Whistler’s first holiday. He was taking it lazily, he wrote to Mrs. 
William Whistler, in straw hat and white shoes, rejoicing in the grapes 
and melons, getting the pleasure out of it that France always gave him. 
But he got more than pleasure. He brought back to London about 
thirty plates of Tours and Loches and Bourges, and settled down in 
London to wind up his connection with the British Artists’. 

Whistler was devoted to his wife, who henceforth occupied a far 
more prominent position in his life than could have been imagined. 
Indeed his life was entirely changed by his marriage. He went less 
into society and had less time for his art. During months he was a 
wanderer, and while he wandered his painting stopped. Not that 
Mrs. Whistler was indifferent to art. She was sympathetic. He 
liked to have her in the studio; when she could not come he brought 
the pictures he was painting home for her to see. He consulted her 
in his difficulties, she shared his troubles, she rejoiced in his triumphs. 
But it cannot be denied that the period of great schemes came to an 
end with his marriage. Although later he painted exquisite pictures, 
there are no canvases like the Mother and Carlyle, the Sarasate and The 
Yellow Buskin. ‘This was no doubt the result partly of his pleasure 
in his new domestic conditions, partly of circumstances that prevented 
him from remaining long enough in one place for continuous work 
to be possible. An artist must give himself entirely to his work, or 
else have a very different temperament from Whistler’s. After a 
year or so in London and two or three happy years in Paris which Mrs. 
1888] 8 273 


JAMEs McNeitt WHISTLER 


Whistler said she did not deserve, her health necessitated wandering 
again. 

Commissions at last came, but Mrs. Whistler’s illness left him no 
chance to carry them out. He said to us one day: “ Now, they want 
these things; why didn’t they want them twenty years ago, when I 
wanted to do them, and could have done them? And they were just 
as good twenty years ago as they are now.” 

Few large portraits begun during these years were completed. 
And after his wife’s death he struggled in vain to return to the old 
conditions of continuous effort to which the world owes his greatest 
masterpieces. It is true that his work never deteriorated till the 
last, that, as he said, he brought it ever nearer to the perfection which 
alone could satisfy him. He never produced anything finer in their 
way than The Master Smith and The Little Rose of Lyme Regis, painted 
towards the end of his married life, or the series of children’s heads of 
his latest years. But these were planned on a smaller scale and required 
less physical effort than the large full-lengths and the decorative designs 
he longed to execute, but was never able to finish, sometimes not even 
to begin. Whistler, with advancing years, became more sure of himself, 
more the master, but circumstances forced him to find his pleasure 
and exercise his knowledge in smaller work. 


CHAPTER XXXII: THE WORK OF THE YEARS EIGHTEEN 
EIGHTY TO EIGHTEEN NINETY-TWO. | 


THESE years were full, for though few large paintings were completed, 
there were many small oils, water-colours, pastels, etchings, and 
lithographs. Whistler, going and coming in England or on the 


Continent, had trunks and bags with compartments for his colours, — 


plates, and lithographic materials. It is impossible to say, he did not 
know, the exact number of small works he produced during this 
period. 


He had used water-colour since his school-days, but, until he went 


to Venice, not to any extent. Some of the Venetian drawings show ~ 
that he was then scarcely master of it. But the results he finally got, — 
both in figure and landscape, were admirable. He touched perfection — 
274 [1880-92 


Work 


in many a little angry sea at Dieppe, or note in Holland, or impression 
of Paris. As not many are dated it may never be known when this 
mastery was reached. He probably would not have been sure of the 
dates. We have gone through drawers of the cabinet in his studio 
with him, when he expressed the utmost surprise on finding certain 
things that he had forgotten, and was unable to say when they were 
painted or drawn. He suffered from this confusion and realised the 
importance of making a complete list of his works, with their dates, 
and there were various projects and commencements. After several 
attempts he found it took too much time. We know that he asked 
Mr. Freer to trace his pictures in America and Mr. D. Croal Thomson 
to do the same in England. Miss Birnie Philip finally swore in the 
Law Courts that what he wanted was for us to prepare a complete 
catalogue. 

Between 1880 and 1892 he made ninety plates in England. They 
begin with Regent’s Quadrant. Then follow little shops in Chelsea, 
_ Gray’s Inn, Westminster, the Wild West (Earl’s Court), Whitechapel, 
Sandwich, the Jubilee, and many figure subjects. There is also the 
Swan and Iris, the copy of an unfinished picture by Cecil Lawson 
for Mr. Edmund Gosse’s Memoir of the painter (1883), another unsuc- 
cessful attempt at reproduction. It was the only plate, since those 
published by the Junior Etching Club, made as an illustration. 
Billingsgate was issued in the Portfolio (1878) and Hamerton’s Etching 
and KEichers (1880), Alderney Street in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts 
(1881), La Marchande de Moutarde in English Etchings (1888), but 
these were etched with no idea of their publication in magazine or 
book. 

The English plates are simple in subject, and they have been 
therefore dismissed as unimportant by unimportant people. But 
many are delightfully composed and full of observation. Whistler 
carrying the small plates about with him, sketched on copper, with 
the knowledge of a lifetime, the subjects he found as other artists sketch 
on paper. ‘Three etchings were made at the Wild West probably 
in an afternoon; one at Westminster Abbey during the Jubilee Service 
of 1887; and ten to thirteen of the Jubilee Naval Review in a day— 
plates that prove triumphantly his power of giving his impressions 
with a few lines of his etching-needle. 

1887] 275 


James McNEILL WHISTLER 


In the autumn of 1887 he went to Belgium with Dr. and Mrs. 
William Whistler, stopping at Brussels, Ostend, and Bruges. In Brussels 
he etched the Hétel de Ville, the Guildhalls, the little shops and streets 
and courts, intending to issue the prints as a set. M. Octave Maus, 
who knew him, says “he was enchanted with the picturesque and 
disreputable quarter of les Marolles in the old town. He was frequently 
to be met in the alleys which pour a squalid populace into the old 
High Street, engaged in scratching on the copper his impressions of 
the swarming life around him. When the inquisitive throng pressed 
him too hard, the artist merely pointed his graver at the arm, or neck, 
or cheek of one of the intruders. The threatening weapon, with his 
sharp spiteful laugh, put them at once to flight.” 

Sometimes Dr. and Mrs. Whistler found him, safe out of the way 
of the crowd, in the bandstand of the Grande Place, where several 
of the plates were made. These are another development in technique. 
With the fewest, the most delicate, lines he expressed the most com- 
plicated and the most picturesque architecture. The plates were 
probably bitten with little stopping-out, and they are printed with a 
sharpness that shows their wonderful drawing. M. Duret has 
said to us that in them Whistler gives ‘“‘ les os de Parchitecture.” A 
very few proofs were pulled. The set was never issued. 

The etchings described as in Touraine are those done on his wedding 
journey and at other times. They also have never been published as a 
set. As in Belgium, great architecture suggested his subjects, and his 
treatment shows that if, as a rule, he refrained from rendering architec- 
ture, it was from no desire to evade difficulties, as ignorant critics sup- 
pose. The line is more vital and the biting more powerful than in the ~ 
Belgian plates. 

The year after his marriage (1889) he etched seventeen plates in and 
around Dordrecht and Amsterdam, including Nocturne—Dance House, 
The Embroidered Curtain, The Balcony, Zaandam, in which he surpassed ~ 
Rembrandt in Rembrandt’s subject. His success is the more surprising 
because scarcely anywhere does the artist sketch under such difficulties — 
as in Holland. The little Dutch boys are the worst in the world, 
and the grown people as bad. In Amsterdam, the women in the houses — 
on one of the canals, where Whistler worked in a boat, emptied buckets — 
of water out of the windows above him. He dodged in time, but had — 
276 [1889-90 — 


3 


i 


THE YELLOW BUSKIN 
ARRANGEMENT IN BLACK 


OIL 
In the Wilstach Collection, Memorial Hall, Philadelphia 
(See page 215) 


PORTRAIT OF M. THEODORE DURET 
ARRANGEMENT IN FLESH-COLOUR AND PINK 


OIL 


In the Metropolitan Museum, New York 
(See page 217) 


ee 


Work 


to call on the police, and, he told us, the next interruption was a big 
row above, and “ I looked up, dodging the filthy pails, to see the women 
vanishing backward being carried off to wherever they carry people 
in Holland. After that, I had no more trouble, but I always had a 
policeman whenever I had a boat.” 

In the Dutch plates he returned to the methods prefected at Venice 
in The Traghetto and The Beggars. After he brought them back to 
London he was interviewed on the subject in the Pall Mall Gazette 
(March 4, 1890), and is reported to have said : 

“First you see me at work on the Thames. Now, there you see 
the crude and hard detail of the beginner. So far, so good. There, 
you see, all is sacrificed to exactitude of outline. Presently and almost 
unconsciously I begin to criticise myself and to feel the craving of the 
artist for form and colour. The result was the second stage, which 
my enemies call inchoate and I call Impressionism. The third state 
I have shown you. In that I have endeavoured to combine stages one 
and two. You have the elaboration of the first stage and the quality 
of the second.” | 

Though we hesitate to accept the words as his, this is an interesting 
statement and a suggestive description. In some of the Dutch plates 
there is more detail than in the Venetian, and yet form is expressed 
not. by the detail of the Thames series but by line. No etcher had 
got such fullness of colour without a mass of cross-hatching that takes 
away from the freshness. It is interesting to contrast his distant 
views of the town of Amsterdam and the windmills of Zaandam with 
Rembrandt’s etchings of the same subjects, and to note the greater 
feeling of space and distance that Whistler gives. The work is more 
elaborate and delicate than in previous plates, so delicate sometimes 
that it seems underbitten. But his method necessitated this. He 
drew with such minuteness that hardly any of the ground, the varnish, 
was left on the plates, and when he bit them, he could only bite slightly 
to prevent the modelling from being lost. He never had been so 
successful in applying his scientific theories to etching, and rarely 
more satisfied with the results. His first idea was to publish the prints 
in a set, through the Fine Art Society, but the Fine Art Society were 
so foolish as to refuse. A few were bought at once for the South 
Kensington and Windsor Collections, and several were shown in the 
1890] 297 


James McNett WuisTLER 


spring of 1890 at Mr. Dunthorne’s gallery. About this time we 
returned to London, and J. commenced to write occasionally in the 
London Press, succeeding Mr. George Bernard Shaw as art critic on 
the Star. This is his impression, written when he saw them (April 8) : 

“I stepped in at Dunthorne’s the other afternoon to have a look 
at the etchings of Amsterdam by Mr. Whistler. There are only eight 
of them, I think, but they are eight of the most exquisite renderings 
by the most independent man of the century. With two exceptions 
they are only studies of very undesirable lodgings and tenements on 
canal banks, old crumbling brick houses reflected in sluggish canals, 
balconies with figures leaning over them, clothes hanging in decorative 
lines, a marvellously graceful figure carelessly standing in the great 
water-door of an overhanging house, every figure filled with life and 
movement, and all its character expressed in half a dozen lines. The 
same houses, or others, at night, their windows illuminated and casting 
long trailing reflections in the water, seemed to be singularly unsuc- 
cessful, the plate being apparently under-bitten or played out. At 
any rate that was the impression produced on me. [We know now 
and have explained the reason for this.] Another there was, of a 
stretch of country looking across a canal, windmills beyond drawn 
as no one since Rembrandt could have done it, and in his plate the 
greatest of modern etchers has pitted himself against the greatest of 
the ancients, and has come through only too successfully for Rem- 
brandt. There are three or four others, I understand, not yet published, 
but this certainly is the gem sofar. The last is a great drawbridge, with 
a suggestion of trees and houses, figures and boats, and a tower in 
the distance, done, I believe, from a canal in Amsterdam. This is 
the fourth distinct series of etchings which Mr. Whistler has in the 
last thirty or thirty-five years given the world: the early miscellaneous 
French and English plates ; the Thames series, valued by artists more 
than by collectors, though even to the latter they are worth more 
than their weight in gold; the Venetian plates; and now these; ~ 
and between while, portraits as full of character as Rembrandt’s, studies : 
of London and Brussels, and I know not what else besides have come ; 
from his ever busy needle. Had Mr. Whistler never put brush to — 
canvas, he has done enough in these plates to be able to say that — 
he will not altogether die.” o% 
278 [1890-92 — 


Honours. Exuisitions. New INTERESTS 


That was J.’s opinion then, and he has not had to change it. 
During 1890 Whistler made a large number of lithographs, excellently 
catalogued by T. R. Way, who printed most of them and was, con- 
sequently, qualified for the task. Three, The Winged Hat, The Tyre- 
smith, and Maunder’s Fish Shop, Chelsea, were published this year in 
the short-lived occasional weekly The Whirlwind, edited by Herbert 
Vivian and Stuart Erskine “in the Legitimist cause ” and to their 
own great amusement. Drawings by Sidney Starr after three of 
Whistler’s pictures appeared, and the editors boasted in their own 
pages within a few weeks that the lithographs, issued for a penny, 
could be had only for five shillings. Five guineas would now be 
nearer the price. 

Another lithograph, Chelsea Rags, came out in the January number 
(1892) of the Albemarle, a monthly edited by Hubert Crackanthorpe 
and W. H. Wilkins, one of those gay experiments in periodical literature 
no longer made in this sad land. The four were called Songs on Stone, 
the later title for a proposed portfolio of lithographs in colour which 
Mr. Heinemann announced but never issued. 


CHAPTER XXXIIT: HONOURS. EXHIBITIONS. NEW 
INTERESTS. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN EIGHTY-NINE TO 
EIGHTEEN NINETY-ONE. 


OrFicrAL recognition of Whistler in England was followed by official 
honours abroad. While President of the British Artists he was asked 
for the first time to show in the International Exhibition at Munich 
(1888). He sent The Yellow Buskin and was awarded a second-class 
medal. The best comment was Whistler’s letter of acknowledgment 
to the Secretary, whom he prayed to convey to the Committee his 
“sentiments of tempered and respectable joy” and “‘complete appre- 
ciation of the second-hand compliment.” But soon after he was 
elected an Honorary Member of the Bavarian Royal Academy, and, 
a year later, was given a first-class medal and the Cross of St. Michael. 
In 1889 he was made Chevalier of the Legion of Honour and received 
a first-class medal at the Paris Universal Exhibition. Another gold 
medal was awarded to him at Amsterdam, where he was showing the 
1889] 279 


James McNertt WHISsTLER 


Mother, The Fur Facket, and Effie Deans—Arrangement in Yellow and 
Grey. We have heard that Israels and Mesdag, who were little in 
sympathy with Whistler, objected to giving him a medal, but James 
Maris insisted. The year before Mr. E. J. Van Wisselingh had bought 
from Messrs. Dowdeswell Effie Deans, which he had seen in the Edin- 
burgh International Exhibition of 1886, though it was skied. He 
sold it within a short time to Baron Van Lynden, of The Hague, 
then making his collection, bequeathed by the Baroness Van Lynden 
in 1900 to the Rijks Museum at Amsterdam. The picture is almost 
the only one to which Whistler gave a literary title, except the pastel 
Annabel Lee. Effie Deans is apparently a portrait of Maud, and it 
belongs to the period of The Fur Facket and Rosa Corder. The Butterfly 
was added later. The painting was not signed when bought by Baron 
Van Lynden, who, hearing from Van Wisselingh that Whistler was in 
Holland, asked him to sign it. Whistler not only did so, but we believe 
then added the quotation from the Heart of Midlothian written at 
the bottom of the canvas: “She sunk her head upon her hand and 
remained seemingly unconscious as a statue,” the only inscription on 
any of his paintings that we have seen. Walter Sickert says that it was 
added by some one else, but as Whistler saw the picture in 1902 and 
made no objection to it, Mr. Sickert’s statement scarcely seems 
correct. 

Few things pleased Whistler more than the honours from Amster- 
dam, Munich, and Paris. To celebrate the Bavarian medal and decora- 
tion his friends gave him a dinner at the Criterion, May 1, 1889. Mr. 
E. M. Underdown, Q.C., was in the chair, and Mr. W. C. Symons 
hon. secretary. Two Royal Academicians, Sir W. Q. Orchardson and 
Mr. Alfred Gilbert, were present, and also Sir Coutts Lindsay, Stuart 
Wortley, Edmund Yates—Atlas, who never failed him—and many 
others. Whistler was moved, and not ashamed to show it. Stuart 
Wortley, in a speech, said that Whistler had influenced every artist 
in England; Orchardson described him as “a true artist’; and this 
time Atlas spoke, not only with the weight of the World on his shoulders, 
but with praise and affection. Whistler began his speech with a laugh 
at this “‘ age of rapid results when remedies insist upon their diseases.” 
But his voice is said to have been full of emotion before the end : 

“You must feel that, for me, it is no easy task to reply under con- 
280 [1889 


Honours. Exnuisitions. New InrTerests 


ditions of which I have so little habit. We are all even too conscious 
that mine has hitherto, I fear, been the gentle answer that sometimes 
turneth not away wrath. . . . It has before now been borne in upon 
me that in surroundings of antagonism I may have wrapped myself for 
protection in a species of misunderstanding, as that other traveller 
drew closer about him the folds of his cloak the more bitterly the winds 
and the storm assailed him on his way. But, as with him, when the 
sun shone upon him in his path, his cloak fell from his shoulders, so 
I, in the warm glow of your friendship, throw from me all former 
disguise, and, making no further attempt to hide my true feeling, 
disclose to you my deep emotion at such unwonted testimony of affec- 
tion and faith.” 

This was the only public testimonial he ever received in England, 
and one of the few public functions at which he assisted. He seldom 
attended public dinners, those solemn feasts of funeral baked meats 
by which “the Islander soothes his conscience and purchases public 
approval.” We remember that he did not appear at the first dinner 
_ of the Society of Authors, where his place was beside ours—a dinner 
given to American authors, at which Lowell presided. J. recalls an 
artists’ dinner at which Whistler was seated on one side of the chairman 
and Charles Keene on the other. Some brilliant person had placed 
Sir Frederick Wedmore next to Whistler, who had more fun at the 
dinner than the critic. He rarely was seen in the City, and rarely was 
asked in Paris. As an outsider, he was never invited to the Academy. 
Even little private functions, like the Johnson Club, to which J. 
has taken him, he did not care for. It is so easy to be bored, so 
difficult to be amused, on such occasions. He preferred not to run the 
risk. 

Of gentle answers that turn not away wrath there were plenty 
in 1889. At the Universal Exhibition in Paris, Whistler, an American 
naturally proposed to show with Americans. The Yellow Buskin and 
The Balcony were the pictures he selected; he sent twenty-seven 
etchings, knowing that, in a big exhibition, a few prints make no effect. 
The official acknowledgment was a printed notice from General Rush 
C. Hawkins, ‘‘ Cavalry Officer,” Commissioner for the American Art 
Department: “Sir,—Ten of your exhibits have not received the 
approval of the jury. Will you kindly remove them ? ” 

1889] 281 


JAMEs McNeErLtL WHISTLER 


Whistler’s answer was an immediate journey to Paris, a call on 
General Hawkins, the withdrawal of all his prints and pictures, to 
the General’s embarrassment. Whistler wrote afterwards to the New 
York Herald, Paris edition: “‘ Had I been properly advised that the 
room was less than the demand for place, I would, of course, have 
instantly begged the gentlemen of the jury to choose, from among 
the number, what etchings they pleased.” 

Twenty-seven etchings, unless specially invited, were rather a large 
number to send to any exhibition. He had been already asked to 
contribute to the British Section, and to it he now took the two pictures 
and ten prints. Though General Hawkins’ action is as incomprehen- 
sible as his appointment to such a post, Whistler made a mistake. There 
is no doubt that, had his seventeen accepted prints remained in the 
American Section, he would have had a much better show than in the 
English, where only ten were hung and where, for etching, Seymour 
Haden, and not Whistler, was awarded a Grand Prix. ‘“‘ Whistler’s 
Grievance ” got into the papers, and the letters and interviews remain 
in The Gentle Art. If in 1889 he identified himself with the British, — 
it was due solely to the discourtesy, as he considered it, of his country- 
men. ‘There was no denial of his nationality, and, though later always 
invited to show in the British Section of International Exhibitions, — 
he always refused when there was an American Section. 

In 1888 the New Gallery took over the played-out traditions of — 
the Grosvenor, but Whistler did not follow to Regent Street. His — 
Carlyle, several drawings, and many etchings went to the Glasgow — 
International Exhibition that year, and he was well represented at — 
the first show of the Pastel Society at the Grosvenor. He was more — 
in sympathy with the New English Art Club than any other group of © 
artists. .It was then youthful and enthusiastic, most of the younger — 
men of promise or talent belonged, and it might have accomplished 
great things had its founders been faithful to their original ambition. — 
Whistler was never a member, but he sent a White Note and the etching — 
of the Grande Place, Brussels, to the exhibition in 1888, and Rose and } 
Red, a pastel, in 1889, when he was elected by the votes of the exhibitors — 
to the jury. To the infinite loss of the club he never showed again. — 
In the same year (1889), at the Institute of the Fine Arts at Glasgow, ~ : 
the Mother strengthened the impression made by the Carlyle the year 
282 [1889 


Honours. Exursitions. New INTERESTS 


before ; there was a show of his work in May at the College of Working 
Women in Queen Square, London; and The Grey Lady was included 
in an exhibition at the Art Institution, Chicago, in the fall. 

The show at Queen Square was remarkable. It is said to have been 
“organised by Mr. Walter Sickert, by permission of Miss Goold (head 
of the College), and opened by Lord Halsbury.” There had not been 
such a representative collection of his work since his exhibition of 
1874. The Mother, Carlyle, Rosa Corder, Irving were there, many 
pastels and water-colours, and many etchings of all periods from the 
Thames Series to the last in Touraine and Belgium. We have never 
seen a catalogue. We remember how it impressed us when we came 
to the fine Queen Anne house in the quiet, out-of-the-way square, 
how indignant we were to find nobody but a solitary man and a 
young lady at the desk, and how urgently we wrote in the Star that, 
‘if there were as many as half a dozen people who cared for good 
work, they should go at once to see this exhibition of the man who 
has done more to influence artists than any modern.” There is 
a legend of Whistler’s coming one day, taking a picture from the 
wall and walking away with it, despite the protest of the attendant 
and the Principal of the College, wishing, so the legend goes, to 
carry out the theory he was soon to assert that pictures were only 
“kindly lent their owners.” But the story of his making off with 
it across the square, followed by the college staff screaming “ Stop 
thief!” and being nearly run in by a policeman, is a poor invention. 
His desire, however, to keep his pictures in his possession, his hope that 
those who bought them would not dispose of them, was growing, and 
his disgust when they were sold, especially at increased prices, was 
expressed in his answer to some one who said, “ Staats Forbes tells me 
that that picture of yours he has will be the last picture he will ever 
part with.” ‘“ H’m,” said Whistler, who had had later news, “ it is the 
last picture he has.” 

In March 1890 Whistler moved to No. 21 Cheyne Walk, an old 
house with a garden at the back, farther down the Embankment, 
close to Rossetti’s Tudor House. It was panelled from the street door 
to the top. A cool scheme of blue and white decorated the dining- 
room, where there was one perfect painting over the mantel, and, 
Mr. Francis James has told us, the Six Projects hung for a while on the 
1890] 283 


James McNeritt WuisTLEeR 


walls. The drawing-room on the first floor was turned into a studio, 
there was a bedroom above, but the rest of the house was empty and 
bare. From M. Gérard Harry we have an explanation of this bareness : 

“‘T remember a striking remark of Whistler’s at a garden-party 
in his Chelsea house. As he caught me observing some incompletely 
furnished rooms and questioning within myself whether he had occupied 
the house more than a fortnight or so: ‘ You see,’ he said, with his 
short laugh, ‘I do not care for definitely settling down anywhere. 
Where there is no more space for improvement, or dreaming about 
improvement, where mystery is in perfect shape, it is fmis—the end— 
death. There is no hope, nor outlook left.’ I do not vouch for the 
words, but that was certainly the sense of a remark which struck me 
as offering a key to much of Whistler’s philosophy, and to one aspect 
of his original art.” 

On September 24, 1890, Mr. Cole, calling at Cheyne Walk, “ found 
him painting some excellent portraits—very strong and fine.” What 
all these were it is difficult to say, though one was the well-known 
Harmony in Black and Gold—Comte Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac, 
Whistler’s fourth portrait of a man in evening dress. Another may 
have been the second portrait never finished, which Montesquiou 
described to Edmond de Goncourt, who made a note of it in his Fournal 
(July 7, 1891) : 

*¢ Montesquiou tells me that Whistler is now tbibee two portraits 
of him: one is in evening dress, with a fur cloak over his arm, the other 
in a great grey cloak with a high collar, and, just suggested, a necktie 
of a mauve not to be put into words, though his eyes express the colour 
of it. And Montesquiou is most interesting to listen to as he explains 
the method of painting of Whistler, to whom he gave seventeen sittings 
during the month spent in London. The first sketch-in of his subject 
is with Whistler a fury, a passion: one or two hours of this wild fever 
and the subject emerges complete in its envelope. Then sittings, 
long sittings, when, most of the time, the brush is brought close to the 
canvas but does not touch it, is thrown away, and another taken, and 
sometimes in three hours not more than fifty touches are given to the 
canvas, every touch, according to Whistler, lifting a veil from the 
sketch. 

“Oh, sittings! when it seemed to Montesquiou that Whistler, 


284 [1891 


a aot 


Honours. Exuipitions. New INTERESTS 


by that intentness of observation, was draining from him his life, 
something of his individuality, and, in the end, he was so exhausted 
that he felt as if all his being was shrinking away, but happily he 
discovered a certain vin de coca that restored him after those terrible 
sittings.” 

J. went only once to No. 21 Cheyne Walk. Then it was to consult 
Whistler concerning Sir Hubert von Herkomer’s publication of photo- 
gravures of pen-drawings in dn Idyl, and description of them as etch- 
ings. Whistler received J. in the white-panelled dining-room, where he 
was breakfasting on an egg. Sickert came in and was at once sent out— 
with a letter. Whistler felt the seriousness of the offence, and he lent 
his support to W. E. Henley’s National Observer, in which the affair 
was exposed and in which also the Queen was called upon to remove 
Herkomer from his post as Slade Professor at the University of Oxford. 

From this time J. saw Whistler oftener, meeting him in clubs, 
in galleries, in friends’ houses, occasionally at Solferino’s, the little 
restaurant in Rupert Street which was for several years the meeting- 
place, a club really, for the staff of the National Observer. Nobody 
who ever lunched there on Press day at the Academy, or the New 
English Art Club, or the New Gallery is likely to forget the talk round 
the table in the corner. Never have we heard R. A. M.— Bob” 
—Stevenson more brilliant, more paradoxical, more inspiriting than 
at these midday gatherings. Whistler’s first encounter with Henley’s 
paper, then edited in Edinburgh, was a sharp skirmish which, though 
he afterwards became friendly with Henley, he never forgot nor forgave. 
Henley was publishing a series of articles called Modern Men, among 
whom he included Whistler, “the Yankee with the methods of Barnum.” 
The policy of the National Observer was to fight, everybody, every- 
thing, and it fought with spirit. But it had no patience with the battles 
of others. Of Whistler the artist it approved, but not of Whistler 
the writer of letters, whom it pronounced rowdy and unpleasant. 
“* Malvolio-Macaire”’ was its name for him. At last, in noticing 
Sheridan Ford’s Gentle Art, of which we shall presently have more 
to say, it continued in the same strain, and a copy of the paper con- 
taining the review, ‘‘ with proud mark, in the blue pencil of office,” 
was sent to Whistler. He answered with a laugh at “ the thick thumb 
of your editorial refinement ” pointed “in deprecation of my choice 
1891] 285 


James McNeitt WuiIsTLER 


rowdyism.” Two things came of the letter—one amusing, the other 
a better understanding. Whistler’s answer finished with a “ regret 
that the ridiculous ‘ Romeike’ has not hitherto sent me your agreeable 
literature.” Romeike objected; he had sent eight hundred and seven 
clippings to Whistler: he demanded an apology. Whistler gave it 
without hesitation: he had never thought of Romeike as a person, 
and he wrote, “if it be not actionable permit me to say that you really 
are delightful!!”? No one could appreciate the wit, the fun of it 
all better than Henley, and he was the more eager to meet Whistler. 
His account of the meeting, when it came about, was coloured by the 
enthusiasm that made Henley the stimulating person he was. ‘“ And 
we met,” he would say, throwing back his great head and laughing 
with joy, though he gave no details of the meeting. Henley managed 
to find “‘ the earnest of romance” in everything that happened to him. 
“¢ And there we were—Whistler and I—together!” he would repeat, 
as if it were the most dramatic situation that could be imagined. 

The bond between them was their love of the Thames. Henley 
was the first to sing the beauty of the river that Whistler was the 
first to paint, and when he wrote the verses (Wo. XIII. in Rhymes and 
Rhythms) that give the feeling, the magical charm of the Nocturnes, 
he dedicated them to Whistler. Big and splendid as a Viking, exuber- 
ant, emphatic, Henley was not the type physically to interest Whistler. 
The sketch of him (made in 1896) is one of Whistler’s least satisfactory 
lithographs, and only six impressions were pulled. But their relations 
were cordial, and when the National Observer was transferred to London 
and Henley returned with it, Whistler sometimes came to the dinners 
of the staff at Solferino’s. Henley had gathered about him the younger 
literary men and journalists: Rudyard Kipling, “ Bob” Stevenson, 
J. M. Barrie, Marriott Watson, G. S. Street, Vernon Blackburn, Fitz- 
maurice Kelly, Arthur Morrison, Charles Whibley, Kenneth Grahame, 
George W. Steevens. After Mr. Astor bought the Pall Mall Gazette 
its staff was largely recruited from the National Observer, and Mr. 
Henry Cust, the editor, and Mr. Ivan-Muller, the assistant editor, joined 
the group in the room upstairs. When dinner was over and Henley 
was thundering at his end of the table, the rest listening, Whistler 
sometimes dropped in, and the contrast between him and Henley 


added to the gaiety of the evening: Henley, the “ Burly” of Stevenson’s : 


286 [1890 


Honours. Exutipitions. New INTERESTS 


essay on Talk and Talkers, “who would roar you down . . . bury 
his face in his hands . . . undergo passions of revolt and agony” ; 
Whistler, who would find the telling word, let fly the shaft of wit 
that his eloquent hands emphasised with delicate, graceful gesture. 
His “Ha ha!” rose above Henley’s boisterous intolerance. When 
“Bob” Stevenson was there—‘ Spring-Heel’d Jack ”—the enter- 
tainment was complete. But each of the three talked his best when 
he held the floor, and we have known Whistler more brilliant when 
dining alone with us. From Solferino’s, at a late hour when Henley, 
as always in his lameness, had been helped to his cab, Whistler and J. 
would retire with “ Bob” Stevenson and a little group to the Savile, 
where everything under heaven was discussed by them, Professor 
Walter Raleigh, Reginald Blomfield, and Charles Furse frequently 
joining them, and they rarely left until the club was closed. Whistler 
would, in his turn, be seen to his cab on his way home, and a smaller 
group would listen to “‘ Bob” between Piccadilly and Westminster 
Bridge, waiting for him to catch the first morning train to Kew. 
Whistler seldom left without some parting shot which his friends 
remembered, though he was apparently unconscious of the effects of 
these bewildering little sayings as he returned to his house in Cheyne 
Walk. There he was often followed by his new friends and often visited 
by the few “ artists ” he had not cared to lose, especially Mr. Francis 
James and Mr. Theodore Roussel. A few Followers continued to 
flutter at his heels. Portraits of some of those who came to 21 Cheyne 
Walk are in the lithograph of The Garden; Mr. Walter Sickert, Mr. 
Sidney Starr, Mr. and Mrs. Brandon Thomas. Mr. Walter Sickert 
had married Miss Ellen Cobden, and she was a constant visitor. So 
also were Henry Harland, later editor of the Yellow Book, and Mrs. 
Harland; Wolcot Balestier, the enterprising youth who set out to 
corner the literature of the world, and who, with Mr. S. S. McClure, 
was bent on syndicating everybody, including Whistler; Miss Carrie 
Balestier, now Mrs. Rudyard Kipling; an American journalist called 
Haxton, with a stammer that Whistler adored to the point of borrowing 
it on occasions, though he never could manage the last stage when 
words that refused to be spoken had to be spelled. Another was 
André Raffalovitch, a Russian youth and poet, whose receptions 
brought together many amusing as well as fantastic elements of London 
1890] 287 


James McNett WuIsTLER 


society. But the most intimate friend he made at this period was Mr. 
William Heinemann, and this brings us to the great event of 1890, the 
publication of The Gentile Art of Making Enemies. 


CHAPTER XXXIV: “THE GENTLE ART.” THE YEAR 
EIGHTEEN NINETY. 


For years Whistler’s letters to the papers puzzled the people. George 
Moore laboured to account for them in Modern Painting by an elaborate 
theory of physical feebleness, and George Moore has been taken seriously 
in the provinces and America. One glimpse of Whistler at the printing- 
press, sleeves rolled up showing two strong arms, and the theory and 
the theorist would have been knocked out. The letters were not an 
eccentricity ; they were not a weakness. From the first, written 
to the Atheneum in 1862, they had one aim, “to make history.” 
Buried in the papers, they were lost; if the con were to be made 
they must be collected. They were collected and edited as The Gentle 
Art of Making Enemies as Pleasingly Exemplified in Many Instances, 
Wherein the Serious Ones of this Earth, Carefully Exasperated, Have 
Been Prettily Spurred on to Unseemliness and Indtscretion, While Over- 
come by an Undue Sense of Right. 

The book, born of years of fighting, was ushered into the world by 
a fight. The work of collecting and arranging the letters was under- 
taken by Mr. Sheridan Ford, an American journalist in London. 
Whistler said that Ford only helped him. Ford said that the idea was 
his, that he, with Whistler’s approval, was collecting and editing the 


letters for a publication of his own. We give Ford’s story and that of — 


one who followed it at the time, Mr. J. McLure Hamilton, and this we 
are better pleased to do because Whistler misunderstood Mr. Hamilton’s 
part in the matter, and credited him with a malice and enmity that 
few men could be so incapable of as he. Whistler would never consent 
to meet him and could not understand why we should not agree in 
his view of Mr. Hamilton as “a dangerous person.” . By accident 
they did meet in our flat. Whistler was dining with us, Mr. and Mrs. 
Hamilton called in the evening. Other people were there, and they — 


288 [1890 


het eres 


Pe eg aa oo SEA vas 


simply ignored one another; chance had blundered in its choice of 


t 


“Tue GENTLE ART ”’ 


the moment for the meeting. We think Whistler would have felt 
the unfairness of his judgment of Mr. Hamilton’s conduct could he 
have read Mr. Hamilton’s version which he has sent us : 

“In the spring of 1889 I met Mr. and Mrs. Sheridan Ford. 
Sheridan Ford was writing for the New York Herald, and Mrs. Sheridan 
Ford had been interesting picture-dealers in the work of Swan, Clausen, 
Melville, and others. Ford had a very strong taste for art, and seemed 
to be opposed to all forms of trickery, and was engaged on a series of 
articles which appeared in the New York Herald, London edition, 
upon Whistler and his work. He was also the author of Art, a Com- 
modity, a pamphlet widely read both in England and America. He 
came to me one day, and told me of an idea that he thought could be 
carried out with advantage to himself and Whistler. He suggested 
that the letters which Whistler had been publishing from time to 
time in the Press should be published in book form. The title was to 
be The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, and was, I understood, Ford’s. 
Whistler and he had talked the matter over, and it was agreed between 
them that Ford should collect the letters, edit them with remarks of his 
own, and publish the book for his own profit. 

“The work went on for some months, and occasionally Ford would 
bring me letters that he had unearthed from the newspaper files at 
the British Museum to read. I was not acquainted with Whistler, 
but from what Ford told me I understood that Whistler was as much ~ 
interested in the progress of the book as Ford. The latter seemed 
to be looking forward with great eagerness to the production of a book 
which could not fail to amuse the art world. 

“One morning Ford came to me at Alpha House in great distress. 
He brought with him a letter from Whistler requesting him to dis- 
continue the making of the book, and containing a cheque for ten 
pounds in payment for the trouble that he had had in collecting the 
materials. The book at that time was almost complete, and the preface 
written. After a prolonged talk with him upon all the bearings of 
the case, I concluded that Whistler’s change of mind had been deter- 
mined by the discovery that there would be too much credit and profit 
lost to him if he allowed Ford to bring out the work, and that probably 
Mrs. Whistler had suggested to Whistler that it would be a great gain 
to him if he were to issue the letters himself. Ford asked me what 
1890] s 289 


James McNett WHIsTLER 


I would advise him to do. I replied that I personally would not 
go on with the book, but that if he were careful to omit all copyright 
matter he would be perfectly justified in continuing, after having, 
of course, returned the cheque to Whistler. I have no doubt that 
Ford asked the advice of others, for soon he brought me the advance 
proofs to read, and I spent a great deal of time going over them, 
sometimes suggesting alterations and improvements. A note from 
Ford reached me telling me that the book was finished, and asking 
my permission to dedicate it to me. I wrote, in reply, that I did 
not wish the work dedicated to me. Ford found a good publisher 
who was willing to undertake the publication of the work, and, as far 
as I could see, everything was going on satisfactorily, when one morning 
Ford called to see me and told me that Whistler had discovered the 
printer and had threatened to proceed against him if he did not imme- 
diately destroy the sheets, and he (Whistler) found and seized the 
first sewn-up copy (or leaves) with my name on the dedication page, 
in spite of the refusal I had given. 

[The dedication was as follows: ‘“* Dedicated to John McLure 
Hamilton, A Great Painter and a Charming Comrade. In Memory 
of Many Pleasant Days.” The proposed title was The Gentle Art of 
Making Enemies. F. McNeill Whistler as the Unattached Writer. 
With Some Whistler Stories Old and New. FEdited by Sheridan Ford. 
Brentano’s. London, Paris, New York, Washington, Chicago, 1890. 
Both dedication and title we have seen in Ford’s handwriting. ] 

“This brought at once a letter from Whistler to me, in which 
he abruptly accused me of assisting Ford in wronging him. I replied 
in a few words denying his allegations. At this interview Ford’s manner 
was strange, and for several weeks after he was confined to his house, ~ 
a natural consequence of seeing all his hopes shattered. He had — 
foreseen in the successful production of The Gentle Art of Making 
Enemies the opening of a happy and profitable career in letters. After — 
his recovery Mr. and Mrs. Ford went away, pursued by the relentless — 
activity of Whistler. In the end, the so-called ‘ pirated edition,’ 
paper-bound, appeared in Mechlin or some other Continental city 
and was more or less clandestinely offered for sale in England. Whistler’s ‘ 
handsome volume appeared almost simultaneously. . 

“‘While these incidents were progressing, 1 was asked to dina 
290 hen 


“THe GENTLE ArT” 


at the Hogarth Club, and it had evidently been prearranged that 
I should meet Whistler after dinner in the smoking-room. This was 
my first introduction to the great master. We talked Art and common- 
place, but he never touched upon the subject of the book, and as I 
was quite sure the meeting had been arranged in order that he might 
discuss with me Ford’s conduct, I could not understand his silence. 
Our next meeting was at a conversazione held at the Grosvenor Galleries, 
when we both freely discussed together the whole question before 
Melville, who was displeased at the attitude I took with Whistler. 
I frankly told him that I thought he had done Ford a great wrong in 
withdrawing the editorship of the book which rightly belonged to 
him.” 

Sheridan Ford, persisting that Whistler had conferred on him 
the right to publish the collection, announced the simultaneous publi- 
cation of his book in America and England. The English publishers, 
Messrs. Field and Tuer, of the Leadenhall Press, supposed that Ford 
was acting for Whistler when he brought them the MS., which at 
that time is said to have been called The Correspondence of ‘fames 
McNeill Whistler. The text was set up and cast, the type distributed ; 
they were ready to print when they discovered their mistake. ‘“ We 
then sent for the person in question,” they wrote to Messrs. Lewis 
and Lewis, Whistler’s solicitors, ‘‘ and told him that until he obtained 
Mr. Whistler’s sanction, we declined to proceed further with the 
work.” 

Sheridan Ford went to Antwerp, and had the book printed there. 
Sir George Lewis followed and seized the edition at the printers’ on 
the day of publication, when vans for its distribution were at their 
door. The two thousand copies were carried off by the Procureur 
du Roi. The matter came before the Belgian Courts in October 1891, 
M. Edmond Picard and Maitre Maeterlinck, cousin of Maeterlinck 
the poet, appearing for Whistler. M. Harry, of the Indépendance 
Belge, described Whistler in the witness-box, with the eyes of a Mephis- 
 topheles flashing and sparkling under the thick eyebrows, his manner 
easy and gay, his French fluent and perfect. He was asked his religion 
and hesitated. The Judge, thinking to help him, suggested, “A 
Protestant, perhaps ?”’ His answer was a little shrug, as much as to 
say, “I am quite willing. You should know. As you choose!” He 
1890] 291 


James McNertt WuiIsTLER 


was asked his age—even the Belgian reporter respected his objection 
to having any. Judgment was given for him. Sheridan Ford was 
sentenced to a fine of five hundred francs or three months’ imprison- 
ment; to three thousand francs damages or three months more; to 
the confiscation of the two thousand copies, and to costs. After the 
trial Whistler was taken to the cellars of the Palais de Justice, and shown 
the confiscated copies, stored there with other fraudulent goods, by 
the law of Belgium destined to perish in dampness and gloom. 

The affair has not been forgotten in Belgium—nor has Whistler. — 
One impression has been written for us by M. Edmond Picard, the 
distinguished Senator, his advocate : 

“En me demandant de parler de Pillustre et regretté Whistler, vous 
ne déstrez certes pas que j’ajoute mon lot a la riche pyramide @ admiration 
et d éloges définitivement érigée a sa glotre. 

“Il ne peut Sagir, dans votre pensée que de ce que je pourrais ajouter 
de spécial et de pittoresque ala Biographte du Grand Artiste. 

“St Pat beaucoup vu et aimé ses cuvres, je wat qu’entrevu son 
originale personne. 

“Voter deux traits intéressants qui sy rapportent. 

“Il y a quelques années il singquiéta dune contrefagon qwun étranger 
habitant Anvers avait perpétré en Belgique de son curteux hore, ‘ L’ Art 
charmant de se faire des ennemis. Fe le vis un jour entrer dans mon 
cabinet et il me dit avec un sourire sarcastique, ‘‘fe souhaiterais que 
vous fussiez mon avocat dans cette petite affaire parcequ’on ma dit que 
vous pratiquez aussi bien que mot Part charmant de se faire des 
ennemts.’ : 

““ Le proces fut gagné a Anvers avec la collaboration de mon confrere, : 
M. Maeterlinck, parent du poéte qui honore tant notre pays. On célébra 
chez lui cette victoire. Quand Whistler, héros de la féte, arriva dans 
Phospitaliére maison, 11 s’attardait dans Pantichambre. La bonne que® 
Pavatt regu vint, avec quelque affarement dire en flamand au salon ou ~ 
Pon attendait, ‘ Madame, cest un acteur ; 11 se coiffe devant le miroir, 11 se 
pommade, 11 se met du fard et de la poudre : !? Apres un assez long inter- 
valle, Whistler parut, courtots, correct, ciré, cosmétiqué, pimpant comme 
le papillon que rappeéle son nom et qw il mit en signature sur queljues tH :; 
des billets qu’tl écrivit alors a ses consetls. | # 

“ Et voila tout ce que je puis vous offrir. ; is 
292 [1890 — 


‘THe GENTLE ART” 


Fa demandé 4 M. Maeterlinck les documents qu’il pouvait avoir 
conserves de cet épisode judiciaire. Ses recherches ont été vaines. Alors 
que @innombrables pieces insignifiantes ont été conservées, le Hasard 
qui se permet tout a fait disparaitre ces précieuses épaves.” * 

The “ Extraordinary Piratical Plot,” as Whistler called it in The 
Gentle Art, did not end in Antwerp. Sheridan Ford took the book 
to Paris, where it was issued by Delabrosse et Cie, 1890, though it is 
said by Mr. Don C. Seitz to have been printed in Ghent ; in Antwerp, 
Mr. Ford recently told an interviewer—this edition we have seen ; 
while other copies, with the imprint of Frederick Stokes and Brother, 
were sent to the United States. Sir George Lewis suppressed the 
Paris edition and prevented the importation of the book into England, 
and Messrs. Stokes cabled to London that their name was used without 
their permission. The balance of the edition is stated to have been 
destroyed by fire. Copies through the post reached England, sent 
to newspapers for review and to individuals supposed to be interested, 
among whom we were included. In June 1890 a so-called “ second 
edition ” from Paris was received by some papers. Mr. Seitz says that 
hardly any copies are in existence. Sheridan Ford says that nine 
thousand were sold. But that was the last heard of it, and Sheridan 
Ford’s book was killed. 

Judging from the facts, Whistler treated Ford badly, but Sheridan 
Ford acted in defiance of Whistler, and in the Paris edition published an 
article so vile that papers refused to print it. Three versions are given 
as to the cause of the quarrel. The first is that Mrs. Whistler inter- 
fered and told Whistler to take the work over himself; the second 
is Sheridan Ford’s statement that Whistler wished M. Duret to prepare 
the book ; and the third is the suggestion of Mr. Seitz that the difference 
arose over the insertion of a letter of Oscar Wilde’s. As this letter 
was printed in Whistler’s edition, Mr. Seitz’s conclusions are of little 
value and his assertions differ from Sheridan Ford’s contemporary 
tale. Whistler’s version, published by Sheridan Ford in the letter 
dated August 18, 1889, is: ‘“‘ I think, for many reasons, we would do 
well to postpone the immediate consideration of the proposed publi- 
cation for a while. At this moment I find myself curiously interested 
in certain paintings, the production of which might appropriately 

* See Appendix at end of volume. 


1890] 293 


James McNett WuIsTLER 


be made anterior to mere literature.” We have heard that he was 
urged to come to this decision by Mr. Theodore Roussel, who told 
him he ought to prepare the book, pay Sheridan Ford, and get rid of 
him. Whistler obtained possession of Sheridan Ford’s work, or rather 
of his letters collected by Sheridan Ford, arranged them, commented 
on them, and published them in his own fashion. Sheridan Ford’s 
book is undistinguished ; Whistler’s contains on every page evidence 
of his care in carrying out his ideas of book decoration. 

Whistler, who was delighted with Mr. William Heinemann’s 
artistic instinct, sympathy, enthusiasm, and quick appreciation of his 
intention, gave him the book to publish. From the day their agree- 
ment was signed the publisher entered into the matter with all his 
heart. Whistler’s fights were his fights, Whistler’s victories his 
victories. Whistler was flattered by his understanding of things and 
came daily almost to take out his “ publisher, philosopher, and friend,” 
as he described Mr. Heinemann, to breakfast at the Savoy. He would 
arrive at eleven, when the business man had hardly got into the swing 
of his morning’s work. Was it not preposterous that there should 
be other books to be prepared, other matters to be thought of, while 
this great work of art was being born? The Savoy balcony overlooking 
the Embankment was, at so early an hour, deserted, and there they 
could discuss, change, and arrange every detail without inter- — 
ruption. Hours were spent often over a single Butterfly, and usually 
Whistler’s pockets were full of gay and fantastic entomological — 
drawings. 

Whistler was constantly at the Ballantyne Press, where the book 
was printed. He chose the type, he spaced the text, he placed the @ 
Butterflies, each of which he designed to convey a meaning. They — 
danced, laughed, mocked, stung, defied, triumphed, drooped wings : 
over the farthing damages, spread them to fly across the Channel, — 
and expressed every word and every thought. He designed the title- — 
page; a design contrary to established rules, but with the charm, — 
the balance, the harmony, the touch of personality he gave to every- _ 
thing, and since copied and prostituted by foolish imitators who had — 
no conception of its purpose. Mr. MacCall, of the Ballantyne Press, — 
has told us of his interest and has a proof of it in a collection of © 
Butterflies and proof sheets covered with Whistler’s corrections. Here, — 
294 [1890 


“THe GENTLE ART” 


too, as everywhere by those he worked with, he is remembered with 
affection, and the printers were delighted to profit by his suggestions. 
The cover was in brown, with a yellow back. The title, though attri- 
buted to Sheridan Ford, can be traced to Whistler’s speech at the 
Criterion dinner and the gentle answer that turneth not away wrath. 
The dedication is: ‘To the rare Few, who, early in Life, have rid 
Themselves of the Friendship of the Many, these pathetic Papers 
are inscribed.” 

The book was published in June 1890 and has gone through eight 
editions, Messrs. John M. Lowell and Co., and then Messrs. Putnam’s 
Sons, issuing itin America. It met the fate of all his works. The Press 
received it with the usual smile at Mr. Whistler’s eccentricities, and 
here and there a word of praise and appreciation said with more 
courage than of old. To the multitude of readers it was a jest; 
to a saving remnant it was serious, to none more serious than to 
Whistler, who knew it would live with the writings of Cellini, Diirer 
and Reynolds. 

The Gentle Art is an artistic autobiography. Whistler gave the 
sub-title 4uto-Biographical to one section—he might have given it to 
the whole. He had a way, half-laughing, half-serious, of calling it 
his Bible. ‘“ Well, you know, you have only to look and there it all 
is in the Bible,” or “I am afraid you do not know the Bible as you 
should,” he often said to us in answer to some question about his 
work or his life. The trial, the pamphlets, The Ten O’Clock, the 
Propositions, the letters, the catalogues take their place and appear 
in their proper sequence, not as disconnected, inconsequent little 
squibs and the elaborate bids for notoriety they were supposed 
to be. The book, which may be read for its wit, is really his 
Manifesto. 

He included also the criticisms and comments that had provoked 
him into print, for his object was to expose the stupidity and ridicule 
he was obliged to face, so that his method of defence should be under- 
stood. To read the book is to wonder the more that there should 
have been necessity for defence, so simple and right is his theory, so 
sincere and reverent his attitude. We have spoken of most of the 
different subjects in it as they appeared. The collection intensifies 
the effect each made individually. Everything he wrote had the same 
1890] 295 


James McNeritt WHIsTLER 


end: to show that “art should be independent of all clap-trap; 
should stand alone, and appeal to the artistic sense of eye or ear, without 
confounding this with emotions entirely foreign to it, as devotion, 
pity, love, patriotism, and the like. All these have no kind of concern 
with it, and that is why I insist on calling my works ‘ arrangements ’ 
and ‘ harmonies.’ ” 

It was for the “ knowledge of a lifetime” his work was to be 
valued, he told the Attorney-General in court. In this paragraph, 
and in this answer, you have the key to The Gentle Art. Fault may be 
found with arguments; facts and methods may be challenged. But 
analysis, description, technical statement, and explanation are so 
many proofs of his belief in the independence of art and of his 
surrender to that untiring devotion which the “ goddess ” demands of 
her disciples. 

It would seem impossible that his statement of simple truths should 
have been suspected, were it not remembered that art in England 
depended mostly on “clap-trap”? when Whistler wrote, and that 
his manner of meeting suspicion was intended to mystify. He took 
care that his book should be the expression not only of his belief but 
of his conception of art. Stupidity in critics and public hurt him as 
much as insincerity in artists, and when confronted with it he was 
pitiless. Dullness, too, he could not stand. He met it with “joyous- 
ness’; to be “ joyous”? was his philosophy of life and art, “‘ where 
all is fair,” and this philosophy to the multitude was an enigma. His 


letters to the Press are apt to be dismissed as shrill, cheap, thin, not — | 


worthy a great artist, still unworthier of his endeavour to immortalise 
them. It is true that he might have omitted some things from The 
Gentle Art, though the names and ridicule he found for the “ Enemies ” 
will stick to them for ever. But Whistler thought “ history ” would 
be half made if he did not leave on record both the provocation he 
received and his gaiety of retaliation. When the battle was won and 
recognition came he wrote to Atlas from Paris: ‘‘ We ‘collect’ no 
more.” Messieurs les Ennemis had no longer to fear for their “ scalps.” 
Oftener than not the wit is cruel in its sting. We have quoted the 
“F F F ... Fool” letter. There are others more bitter, because 
gayer on the surface, to Tom Taylor, for instance that final disposing 
of him : 

296 [1890 


sl ina i a ay a git le 


ee eee a , eee eee 
Brant Oe es orca 


“THe GENTLE ART” 


“Why, my dear old Tom, I never was serious with you 
even when you were among us. Indeed, I killed you quite, as who 
should say without seriousness, ‘A rat! A rat!’ you know, rather 
cursorily.” 

Whistler had the power of expressing himself in words which is 
rare with artists. He could write, he had style. Literature, no less 
than art, was to him a “ dainty goddess.”” He worked out his shortest 
letter as carefully as a portrait or a Nocturne, until all trace of labour 
in it had disappeared. People, awed by the spectacle of Ruskin 
wallowing amid the many volumes of Modern Painters without suc- 
ceeding in the end in saying what he wanted, could not believe that 
Whistler was saying anything that mattered when he said in a few 
pages what he wanted with no sign of labour. In his notes to Lruth 
and the World, as in The Ten O’Clock, he reveals his knowledge of the 
Scriptures, while his use of French which displeased his critics, his odd 
references, his unexpected quotations, are placed with the same unerring 
instinct as the Butterfly on his canvas. He chose the right word, 
he made the division of paragraphs effective, punctuation was with him 
an art. It is difficult to give examples, because there are so many. 
The Ten O’Clock is full of passages that show him at his best, none 
finer than the often-quoted description of London “ when the evening 
mist clothes the riverside with poetry, as with a veil.” The Propo- 
sitions and The Red Rag are as complete, as simple and direct as his 
prints. The book, as an exposition of his beliefs and doctrines, ranks 
with Reynolds’ Lectures; as a chronicle of an artist’s adventures, it 
is as personal and characteristic as the Memoirs of Cellini. We have 
been criticised for devoting so much space to Whistler’s wit and his 
writings, but as a wit and writer Whistler will live. He was a many- 
sided man, not a lop-sided painter. 

The period of the preparation and publication of The Gentle Art 
was one of unimportant quarrels. In each case there was provocation. 
Of two or three so much was made at the time that they cannot be 
ignored. One, in 1888, was with Mr. Menpes, who, making no secret 
of it, has recorded its various stages until the last, when the Follower 
adopted the Master’s decorations and arrangements in his own house. 
His Home of Taste was paragraphed in the papers, and Whistler held 
him up to the world’s ridicule as “‘ the Kangaroo of his country, born 


1890] 297 


James McNe1itt WHiIsTLER 


with a pocket and putting everything into it.” The affair came to 
a crisis not long after the Times Parnell disclosures,and Whistler wrote 
to him: “ You will blow your brains out, of course. Pigott has shown 
you what to do under the circumstances, and you know youre. to 
Spain. Good-bye.” 

Once afterwards, at a public dinner, Whistler saw Mr. Menpes 
come into the room on Mr. Justin McCarthy’s arm: “Ha ha! 
McCarthy,” he laughed as they passed him. ‘‘Ha ha! You should 
be careful. You know, Damien died.” 

In 1890 Augustus Moore, brother of George, was added to the list 
of ‘‘ Enemies.”” The cause was an offensive reference to Godwin, 
Mrs. Whistler’s first husband, in The Hawk, an insignificant sheet 
Moore edited. Whistler, knowing that he would find him at any 
first-night, went to Drury Lane for the autumn production, 4 Million 
of Money, and in the foyer hit Moore with a cane across the face, crying, 
“ Hawk! Hawk!” There was a scrimmage, and Whistler, as the man 
who attacked, was requested to leave the house. The whole thing 
was the outcome of a sense of honour, a feeling of chivalry, which 
is not now understood in England, though it would have been found 
magnificent in the days of duels. The comic papers made great fun 
of the episode, and the serious ones lamented the want of dignity it 
showed. No one understood Whistler’s loyalty and his devotion to 
the woman he had married. 


CHAPTER XXXV: THE TURN OF THE TIDE. THE YEARS 
EIGHTEEN NINETY-ONE AND EIGHTEEN NINETY-TWO. 


Tue world owed him a living, Whistler said, but it was not until 1891 


~~ 
at a. 


that the world began to pay the debt with the purchase of the Carlyle ; 


for Glasgow and the Mother for the Luxembourg. 
While the Carlyle was at the Glasgow Institute in 1888, Mr. E. A. 
Walton and Sir James Guthrie made up their minds to try to keep 


it for the city. Since the attempt to secure it for Edinburgh the 


Glasgow School had become a power, and as they proclaimed them- 
selves followers of Whistler, it was only right they should do everything _ 


to retain the picture in Glasgow. A petition was presented to the — 


298 [1891 


THE TURN OF THE TIDE 


Glasgow Corporation, signed by a long list of names of influential 
people, which greatly pleased Whistler, for they included Gilbert, 
Orchardson, Millais, Walton, Guthrie, and many others. The price 
asked by Whistler was a thousand guineas, and a deputation 
from the Corporation came to call on him in London.. Whistler 
told us : 

“T received them, well, you know, charmingly, of course. And 
one who spoke for the rest asked me if I did not think I was putting 
a large price on the picture—one thousand guineas. And I said, 
‘Yes, perhaps, if you will have it so!’ And he said that it seemed 
to the Council excessive ; why, the figure was not even life-size. And 
I agreed. ‘But, you know,’ I said, ‘few men are life-size. And 
that was all. It was an official occasion, and I respected it. Then 
they asked me to think over the matter until the next day, and they 
would come again. And they came. And they said, ‘Have you 
thought of the thousand guineas and what we said about it, Mr. 
Whistler?” And I said, ‘Why, gentleman, why—well, you know, 
how could I think of anything but the pleasure of seeing you again ? ’ 
And, naturally, being gentleman, they understood, and they gave me 
a cheque for the thousand guineas.” 

What Whistler meant by “life-size” he has explained. “No 
man alive is life-size except the recruit who is being measured as he 
enters the regiment, and then the only man who sees him life-size is 
the sergeant who measures him, and all that he sees of him is the end 
of his nose; when he is able to see his toes, the man ceases to be life- 
size.” 

Before the Carlyle went to Glasgow Whistler wished to show 
it in London, where, except in Queen Square, it had not been seen 
since the Grosvenor Exhibition of 1877, and it was exhibited at the 
Goupil Gallery. Mr. D. Croal Thomson, then director of the Gallery, 
saw that the tide was turning, and suggested offering the Mother to 
the Luxembourg. In Paris there was a sluggish sort of curiosity and 
the beginning of a sort of appreciation. During the last ten years 
Whistler had shown at the Salon his Lady Meux, the Mother, Carlyle, 
Miss Alexander, The Yellow Buskin, M. Duret, Sarasate, and in 1891 
his Rosa Corder was in the new Salon; but save for the third-class 
medal awarded the Mother in 1883 his pictures received no official 
1891] 299 


James McNertt WuisTLEeR 


recognition, and while several scarcely known Americans were made 
full members of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts he was at first 
simply an Associate. Many of his smaller works had been seen at 
different times in the Petit Gallery. At Mr. Croal Thomson’s sugges- 
tion the Mother was sent to Messrs. Boussod Valadon in Paris, and 
subscriptions for the purchase were opened. Before any amount 
worth mentioning was subscribed the French Government, on the 
initiative of M. Georges Clémenceau and by the advice of M. Roger 
Marx, bought it for the nation. M. Bourgeois, the Minister of Fine 
Arts, had some doubt as to the possibility of offering for so fine a 
masterpiece the small price that the nation could afford. But Whistler 
set him at ease on this point, writing to him that it was for the Mother, 
of all his pictures, he would prefer so “ solemn a consecration,” and 
that he was proud of the honour France had shown him. The price 
paid was four thousand francs. Whistler told Mr. Cole, November 14, 
1891, that his pleasure was in the fact of “ his painting of his mother 
being ‘unprecedentedly’ chosen by the Minister of Beaux-Arts for the 
Luxembourg,” and France that same year bestowed upon him an 
honour he valued higher than almost any he ever received, by making 
him Officer of the Legion of Honour. But the choice was not unprece- 
dented, pictures of other American artists having already been pur- 
chased, while the honour had already been bestowed upon American 
artists now forgotten. 

The event was celebrated by a reception at the Chelsea Arts Club 
on the evening of December 19, 1891. Whistler was presented with 
a parchment of greetings signed by a hundred members as “a record 
of their high appreciation of the distinguished honour that has come 
to him by the placing of his mother’s portrait in the national collection 
of France.” 

Whistler said in reply that he was gratified by this token from his 
brother artists: ‘ It is right at such a time of peace, after the struggle, 
to bury the hatchet—in the side of the enemy—and leave it there. 
The congratulations usher in the ape Ea of my career, for an artist’s 
career always begins to-morrow.’ 

He promised to remain for long one of the Chelsea artists, a promise 
Chelsea artists showed no desire to keep him to. He was a member 
of the Club until he went to Paris. When, later, Mr. (now Sir John) 
300 [1891 


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nd 
3 
’ 


THE Turn OF THE TIDE 


Lavery proposed him as an Honorary Member, there was not enough en- 
thusiasm to carry the motion. And when, still later, it was further 
proposed that the Chelsea Arts Club should officially recognise the 
Whistler Memorial they refused, and the comment of one man was, 
“What had an English Club to do with a memorial by a Frenchman toa 
Yankee in London ? ” 

Early in 1892 Mr. Croal Thomson arranged with Whistler for 
an exhibition of Nocturnes, Marines, and Chevalet Pieces to be held 
at the Goupil Gallery in London, or, as Whistler called it, his “‘ heroic 
kick in Bond Street.” Mr. Croal Thomson says his first idea was 
to show the portraits only. But he soon found that Whistler wanted 
to include all the paintings and was going to take the matter in hand, 
and that he was “ only like the fly on the wheel ” once the machinery 
was set in motion. 

One reason of the success of the exhibition, which surprised not 
only Mr. Croal Thomson but all London, was Whistler’s care when 
selecting his pictures to secure variety. The collection was a magnificent 
refutation of everything that the critics had been saying about him 
for years. They dismissed his pictures as sketches, and he confronted 
them with The Blue Waves, Brown and Silver—Old Battersea Bridge, 
The Music Room, which had not been seen in London since the early 
sixties. They objected to his want of finish and slovenliness in detail, 
and his answer was the Japanese pictures, full of an elaboration the 
Pre-Raphaelites never equalled, and finished with an exquisiteness of 
surface they never attempted. He was told he could not draw, and he 
produced a group of his finest portraits. He was assured he had no 
poetic feeling, no imagination, and he displayed the Nocturnes, with 
the factories and chimneys transformed into a fairyland in the night. 
He was as careful in arranging the manner in which the pictures should 
be presented. His letters to Mr. Croal Thomson from Paris, where 
he spent the greater part of 1892, were minute in his directions for 
cleaning and varnishing the paintings, and putting them into new 
frames of his design. Indeed, the correspondence on the subject, 
which we have seen, is a miracle of thoughtfulness, energy, and method. 

Mr. Croal Thomson tells us: ‘“ Mr. Whistler laboured almost 
night and day: he wrote letters to every one of the owners of his works 
in oil asking loans of the pictures. Some, like Mr. Alexander and all 
1892] 301 


James McNerity WHIsTLER 


the Ionides connection, acceded at once, but others made delays, and 
even to the end several owners declined to lend. On the whole, how- 
ever, the artist was well supported by his early patrons, and the result 
was a gathering together of the most complete collection of Mr. 
Whistler’s best works—forty-three pictures in all. 


“The arrangement of the pictures was entirely Mr. Whistler’s, © 


for although he wished several young artists to come to the Gallery 
the evening the works were to be hung, through some mischance 
they did not arrive, and I was therefore alone with Mr. Whistler and 
received a great lesson in the art of arranging a collection.” 

In the face of so complete a series, in such perfect condition, and 
so well hung, criticism was silenced. We remember the Press view, 
and the dismay of the older critics who hoped for another “ crop of 
little jokes,” and the triumph of the younger critics who knew that 
Whistler had won. The papers, daily, weekly, and monthly, almost 
unanimously admitted that the old game of ridicule was played out 
and praised the exhibition without reserve. The rest, headed by 
Sir Frederick Wedmore, have since been trying to swallow themselves. 
Mr. Croal Thomson recalls that : 

‘Mr. Whistler was not present at the private view. He knew that 
many people would expect to see him and talk enthusiastic nonsense, 
and he rightly decided he was better away, and I was left to receive 
the visitors. Some hundreds of cards of invitation were issued, and 
it seemed as if every recipient had accepted. Crowds thronged the 
galleries all day, and it is impossible to describe the excitement. I do 
not know how it fared with the artist and his wife during the day, 
but about five o’clock in the evening Mr. and Mrs. Whistler came in, 
though they would not enter the exhibition; they remained in a 
curtained-off portion of the Gallery near the entrance. One or two 
of their most intimate friends were informed by me of the presence of 
the painter, and a small reception was held, for a little while, but, 
of course, by that time the battle was won, and there were only con- 
gratulations to be rendered to the master.” 

J. was taken into the little curtained-off room, and later there 
was a triumphal procession to the Arts Club. Whistler declared that 
even Academicians had been seen prowling about the place lost in 
admiration, that it needed only to send a season ticket to Ruskin to 
302 [1892 


* 


r 
i 


re 


Tue Turn oF THE TIDE 


make the situation perfect, and that, “‘ Well, you know, they were 
always pearls I cast before them, and the people were always—well, 
the same people.” 

It is said Whistler first intended to print the catalogue without 
comment or quotation from the Press, but the chance to expose the 
critics was too good, and previous critical verdicts were placed under 
the titles of the pictures. Two hundred and fifty copies were printed 
by Thomas Way, and in a letter to Way’s manager, Mr. Morgan, 
he calls the catalogue “ perfect.” But he also points out that there 
are errors, and insists that by no accident or disaster shall any of the 
first printed batch of two hundred and fifty copies get about, and he 
further says that he proposes to come to the printing office and destroy 
them. We know of only four copies, one our own—now in the Library 
of Congress—of this unbound first edition that have been preserved. 
The other editions, five in all, are in the usual brown paper covers. 
As an instance of his care, Mr. William Marchant, then with Goupils’, 
remembers his spending an afternoon over the arrangement of the few 
words on the cover. In the second edition the word “ by ” disappeared 
from the title-page and “‘ Kindly Lent Their Owners ” was printed. 
This was not intentional on Whistler’s part, for we possess a letter 
in which he asks that it may be put back at once, and also that the 
“ Moral ” at the end of the catalogue, “‘ Modern British (!) art will now 
be represented in the National Gallery of the Luxembourg by one of 
the finest paintings due to the brush of an English artist (!),”’ should be 
credited not to him, but to the Illustrated London News. Before the 
edition was exhausted the “ Kindly Lent Their Owners ” had become 
famous, though it did not appear in subsequent editions. But it re- 
appeared when the catalogue was reprinted in The Gentle Art. The 
extracts he quoted were cruel, but the critics had been cruel. The 
sub-title, ‘‘ The Voice of a People,” explains his object in publishing 
them. The catalogue ended with the quotation from the Chronique 
des Beaux-Arts : 

“Au musée du Luxembourg, vient @étre placé de M. Whistler, 
le splendide Portrait de Mme. Whistler mere, une cuvre destinée a 
Péternité des admirations, une cuvre sur laquelle la consécration des 
siécles semble avoir mis la patine dun Rembrandt, dun Titien, ou d'un 
V élasquez.” 

1892] 303 


James McNeritut WHISTLER 


This, in later editions, was followed by the “‘ Moral ” duly credited 
to the Illustrated London News. 

Before the show closed the pictures were photographed, and twenty- 
four were afterwards published in a portfolio called Nocturnes, Marines, 
and Chevalet Pieces, by Messrs. Goupil. Whistler designed the cover 
in brown. There were a hundred sets, each photograph signed by 
him, published at six guineas, and two hundred unsigned at four 
guineas. 

An immediate result of the exhibition was that sitters came. One 
of the first was the Duke of Marlborough, who gave him a commission 
for a portrait and asked him and Mrs. Whistler to Blenheim for 
the autumn. Whistler wrote the Duke one of his “ charming letters,” 
then heard of his sudden death, and said: 

‘* Now I shall never know whether my letter killed him, or whether 
he died before he got it. Well, they all want to be painted because 
of these pictures, but why wouldn’t they be painted years ago 
when I wanted to paint them, and could have painted them just as 
well ? ” 

And he was besieged by Americans, Whistler said, who were deter- 
mined ‘‘to pour California into his lap,” a determination to which 
he had no objection. His “ pockets should always be full, or my 
golden eggs are addled.” He thought it would be “ amazing fun ” 
to be rich. Once, driving with Mr. Starr, he said: 

“ Starr, I have not dined, as you know, so you need not think I 
say this in any but a cold and careful spirit : it is better to live on bread 
and cheese and paint beautiful things than to live like Dives and paint 
pot-boilers. But a painter really should not have to worry about 
‘various,’ you know. Poverty may induce industry, but it does not 
produce the fine flower of painting. The test is not poverty, it’s 
money. Give a painter money and see what he’ll do; if he does not 
paint his work is well lost to the world. If I had had, say, three thousand 
pounds a year, what beautiful things I could have done.” 

No one could know better than Mr. Croal Thomson how complete 
was this success : 

“ T do not think I am exaggerating when I say that the exhibition 
marked a revolution in the public feeling towards Whistler. His 
artistic powers were hitherto disputed on every hand, but when it — 
304 [1892 


# 


PORTRAIT OF PABLO SARASATE 
ARRANGEMENT IN BLACK 


OIL 


In the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh 


(See page 223) 


PORTRAIT OF LADY COLIN CAMPBELL 
HARMONY IN WHITE AND IVORY 


OIL (DESTROYED) 


From a photograph lent by Pickford R. Waller, Esq. 
(See page 262) 


THE TuRN OF THE TIDE 


was possible for lovers of art to see for themselves what the painter had. 
accomplished the whole position was changed. I will be pardoned, 
I hope, in stating that whereas up to that time the pictures of Mr. 
Whistler commanded only a small sum of money, after the exhibition 
a great number of connoisseurs desired to acquire his works, and there- 
fore their money value immediately increased. 

“In the Goupil collection all the pictures were contributed by 
private owners, and none were offered for sale. I may say in passing 
that, as a matter of fact, the crowds of visitors were so great that no 
transaction of any serious kind was carried through in the Gallery 
between the hanging of the pictures and their dispersal—that is, for 
nearly five weeks there was practically no record of business. 

“‘ But the exhibition altered all this, and it is revealing no secrets 
to say that within a year after the exhibition was closed I had aided 
in the transfer of more than one-half of the pictures from their first 
owners. Mr. Whistler, to whom I always referred before concluding 
any transaction, came to the conclusion that there was hardly a holder 
of his pictures in England but who would sell when tempted by a large 
price. It may be that these owners had become affected by the con- 
tinual misunderstanding and abuse of Mr. Whistler’s works, and that 
when they were offered double or three times the sum for which they 
had their pictures insured they thought they had better take advantage 
of the enthusiasm of the moment. They did not realise that this 
enthusiasm would continue to enlarge, and that what seemed to them 
as original purchasers of the pictures to be a great price is only about 
one-fourth of their present money value. 

*“Tt was the artist’s wish that a similar exhibition should be held 
in Paris, but the project fell through, and from more recent experience 
it would appear as if the London public, sometimes so severely scoffed 
at by Mr. Whistler, was really more appreciative than the Parisian 
public, and, therefore, perhaps after all more intelligent.” 

Whistler sold The Falling Rocket for eight hundred guineas, and 
wished that Ruskin could know that it had been valued at “ four pots 
of paint.” The Leyland sale, May 28, 1892, brought the Princesse 
du Pays de la Porcelaine and smaller works into the auction-room, 
and, though the Princesse fetched only four hundred and twenty 
guineas, this was four times as much as Whistler received. What 
1892] u 305 


James McNeitt WHISTLER 


would he have said to the five thousand Mr. Freer paid for it within 
a year of his death? The sixty or eighty pounds Mr. Leathart paid 
Whistler for the Lange Leizen increased to six or eight hundred when 
he sold it. Mr. Ionides had bought Sea and Rain for twenty or thirty 
pounds, and now asked three hundred. Fifty pounds, the price of 


the Blue Wave when Mr. Gerald Potter had it from Whistler, multi- — 


plied to a thousand when it was his turn to dispose of it. Fourteen 
hundred pounds was given by Arthur Studd for The Little White Girl 
and a Nocturne, the two having cost Mr. Potter about one hundred 
and eighty pounds, and we have been told that Arthur Studd was re- 
cently offered six thousand pounds for The Little White Girl alone. 
Whistler resented it when he found that fortunes were being made “ at 
his expense’ by so-called friends, and he complained that they were 
turning his reputation into pounds, shillings, and pence, travelling 
over Europe and holiday-making on the profits. The previous sentence 
was written when our book first appeared. During 1918 and 1919 there 
has been a fabulous increase in the selling price of Whistler’s work. We 
do not know what amount was paid by Mr. Frick for the Lady Meux, 
the Rosa Corder, and the Mrs. Leyland which he recently purchased. 
Some of the reports of prices are greatly exaggerated no doubt. A few 
owners of Whistlers do appreciate them. But nearly all collectors in 
the United States regard art as they do stocks. They buy for a rise, 
and appreciate only the monetary value of the works they possess. 
One of the most striking cases is that of Mr. Howard Mansfield, 
whom Whistler, during many years, furnished with some of his most 
interesting prints, aided and directed in their collection, hoping, of 
course, that they would be left to a museum. But Mr. Mansfield 
sold his collection for an enormous price, altogether out of pro- 


portion to what Whistler received. Surprising statements have been — 


circulated about the sale of pictures. The announcement of the price 


recently paid for the Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine is as incorrect ~ 
as the title given to the painting, which is simply a small slight sketch 


and different version of the important subject owned by Mr. Freer. 


The bigger the lie the more impressive is such a statement con- 


cerning the prices asked and obtained—the merit of the work is — 


of secondary importance. ‘This is a fair specimen of American 
commercial art criticism. 


306 [1802 


. 


’ 


: 


tig 


THE Turn oF THE TIDE 


Whistler, after the trade in his work began, suggested that a work 
of art, when sold, should still remain the artist’s property; that it 
was only “lent its owner.” It was now his frequent demand to 
owners and condition to purchasers that his pictures should be available 
for exhibition when and where and as often as he pleased. This is 
illustrated in the following letter which Mr. H. S. Theobald, K.C., 
writes us: 

“¢, . . About 1870 I began to get such of his etchings as I could, 
and somewhere early in the eighties I became the fortunate possessor 
of some thirty or forty drawings and pastels through the Dowdeswells. 
Whistler became aware of my ownership of these, and they sometimes 
brought him to my house, which was then in Westbourne Square. 
The pictures, owing to stress of space, hung mostly on the staircase, 
and Whistler would stand in rapt admiration before them, with occa- 
sional ejaculations of ‘ how lovely,’ ‘ how divine,’ and so on. On one 
of these occasions he asked my wife if she had had her portrait taken. 
‘ But of course not,’ he added, ‘ as I have not painted you.’ 

“‘ My intercourse with the Master was limited to occasions when 
he wanted to borrow the pictures. His manner of proceeding was 
somewhat abrupt. Some morning a person would appear in a four- 
wheel cab and present Whistler’s card, on which was written, ‘ Please 
let bearer have fourteen of my pictures.’ Sometimes, but not often, 
there was a preliminary warning from Whistler himself. But though 
the pictures went easily, it was a labour of Hercules to retrieve them. 
Once when I went to fetch them at his studio by appointment, after 
_a previous effort, also by appointment, which was not kept, I found 
the studio locked, but after a search among the neighbours I got the 
key, and then I found some two or three hundred pictures stacked 
round the room buried in the dust of ages. Whistler loved his pictures 
but he certainly took no care of them. On that occasion I remember 
I took away by mistake in exchange for one of my pictures, a Nocturne 
that did not belong to me, though it was very like one of mine. You 
can imagine the Master’s winged words when he found this out. I 
could only cry mea culpa and bow my head before the storm. It was 
the risk to which I feared the pictures were exposed which made me 
harden my heart.” 

Whistler was as anxious to keep his pictures out of exhibitions 
1892] 307 


James McNeritt WHIsTLER 


when for some reason he did not care to have them shown. The large 
Three Girls (Three Figures, Pink and Grey, in the London Memorial 
Exhibition) was at Messrs. Dowdeswell’s in the summer of 1891. He 
had before this tried to get possession of it in order that he might destroy 
it, and he had offered to paint the portrait of the owner and his wife 
in exchange. His offer was refused, and, while the picture was at 
Messrs. Dowdeswell’s, he wrote a letter to the Pall Mall Gazette 
(July 28, 1891), to explain that it was a painting “ thrown aside for 
destruction.” An impudent answer from a critic led to a more explicit 
statement of his views on the subject : 

“‘ All along have I carefully destroyed plates, torn up proofs and 
burned canvases that the truth of the quoted word shall prevail, and 
that the future collector shall be spared the mortification of cata- 
loguing his pet mistakes. To destroy, is to remain.” 

When this picture, with a number of studies for it, was sent to 
the London Memorial Exhibition, it was found very interesting and 
it was hung, and we think it fortunate that it was not destroyed. 
But had the Committee known it was the picture he wished destroyed 
it never would have been exhibited by the International Society. 

In the summer of 1892 Whistler was invited by the Duke of Argyll 
to contribute to the British Section at the World’s Columbian Exposi- 
tion to be held in Chicago the following year, and the picture mentioned 
for the purpose was the Carlyle. The portrait had been skied in a 
corner the previous winter at the Victorian Exhibition in the New 


Gallery, of which Mr. J. W. Beck was Secretary, as he was now of the 


Fine Arts Committee for Chicago. Whistler wrote to Mr. Beck, send- i 


ing his ‘‘ distinguished consideration to the Duke and the President ” 
(Leighton) with the assurance ‘“‘that I have an undefined sense of 
something ominously flattering occurring, but that no previous desire 
on his part ever to deal with work of mine has prepared me with the 
proper form of acknowledgment. No, no, Mr. Beck! Once hung, 
twice shy !” 


When the letter was sent to the papers and printers made “ sky ” 


of the “‘ shy ” Whistler was enchanted. Mr. Smalley told the story of 


the invitation in the Times, after Whistler’s death, under the impres- 
sion that he had been invited to show at Burlington House. That — 
Whistler never was invited to show anything there we know, and we © 
308 [1s92 


THE TuRN OF THE TIDE 


have the further testimony of Sir Fred Eaton, Secretary of the Academy, 
that “ No such proposal as Mr. Smalley speaks of was ever made to 
Mr. Whistler, and it is difficult to understand on what grounds he 
made such a statement.” 

It is an amusing coincidence that this would seem to be confirmed 
by the fate of a letter addressed to Whistler, “The Academy, 
England,” which, after having gone to the newspaper of that name, 
was next sent to Burlington House, and, finally, reached Whistler 
with “‘ Not known at the R.A.,” written on the cover. Here was one 
of the little incidents that Whistler called “the droll things of this 
pleasant life,” and he sent the cover for reproduction to the Daily 
Mazl with the reflection : 

“¢ In these days of doubtful frequentation it is my rare good fortune 
to be able to send you an unsolicited official and final certificate of 
character.” 

Whistler did not depend upon the British Section at the Chicago 
Exposition. Americans made up for the official blunders of 1889. 
Professor Halsey C. Ives, chief of the Art Department, wrote letters 
that Whistler found most courteous, and everything was done to 
secure his pictures and prints. He was splendidly represented by 
The Yellow Buskin, the Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine, The Fur 
Jacket, among paintings, and by etchings of every period. The 
medal given him was the first official honour from his native land, 
where never before had so representative a collection of his work been 
seen. 

Towards the end of 1892 the appreciation of America was expressed 
in another form. The new Boston Library was being built, and Messrs. 
McKim, Meade, and White were the architects. It was determined 
that the interior should be decorated by the most distinguished Ameri- 
can artists. Mr. Sargent and Mr. Abbey were commissioned to do part 
of the work, and they joined with Mr. McKim and St. Gaudens in trying 
to induce Whistler to undertake the large panel at the top of the stairs. 
He made notes and suggestions for the design, which, he told us, was 
to be a great peacock ten feet high; but the work was put off, and, in 
the end, nothing came of the first opportunity given him for mural 
decoration since The Peacock Room. 


1892] 309 


James McNeitt WuisTLer 


CHAPTER XXXVI: PARIS. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN NINETY- 
TWO AND EIGHTEEN NINETY-THREE. 


WHISTLER went to live in Paris again in 1892. Moving from 
London was a complicated affair, and, during several months, he and 
Mrs. Whistler and his sister-in-law, Mrs. Whibley, were continually 
running backward and forward, before they settled in the Rue du Bac. 
We saw him whenever he came to London and whenever we were in 
Paris, and, as we were there often, we saw much of him. 

A group of artists and art critics, whose appreciation of Whistler 
had not waited for the turning of the tide, were in the habit of going 
together to Paris for the opening of the Salon. In 1892, R. A. M. 
Stevenson, Aubrey Beardsley, Henry Harland, D. S. McColl, Charles 
W. Furse, Alexander and Robert Ross, among others, were with us, 
and to all it was a pleasure to find Whistler triumphing as he had 
triumphed earlier in the spring in London. His pictures at the Champ- 
de-Mars were the most talked about and the most distinguished in an 
unusually good Salon. Many came straight from the Goupil Exhibi- 
tion. Whistler called it “‘ a stupendous success all along the line,” and 
said that, coming after the Goupil “ heroic kick,” it made everything 
complete and perfect. He was pleased also with the fact that he was 
elected a full Sociétaire, and this year a member of the jury. 

In the autumn, J., returning to Paris after a long summer in the 
South of France, found Whistler in the Hétel du Bon Lafontaine, a 
house, Whistler said, full of bishops, cardinals, and monsignori, and 
altogether most correct, to which he had moved from the Foyot, 
inhabited by Senators, after a bomb had exploded in the kitchen 
window. J. says: 

“He was not too comfortably established, in one or two small 
rooms. He was full of the apartment in the Rue de Bac, which I 
was taken to see, though there was nothing to see but workmen and 
packing-boxes, In the midst of the moving, he was working, and one 
day I found him in his bedroom with Mallarmé, whose portrait in 
lithography he was drawing, and there was scarcely room for three. 
This portrait is the frontispiece to Mallarmé’s Vers et Prose. 

“It was the first time I had ever seen Whistler working on a litho- 
310 . [18928 


Paris 


graph. He had great trouble with this portrait, which he did more than 
once, not altogether because, as M. Duret says, he could not get the 
head right, but because he was trying experiments with paper. He 
was thoroughly dissatisfied with the mechanical grained paper which 
he had used for the Albermarle and the Whirlwind prints, and he was 
then afraid of trusting to the post the paper that Way was sending him. 
He had found at Belfont’s or Lemercier’s some thin textureless transfer 
paper, thin as tissue paper, which delighted him, though it was difficult 
to work on. When he was doing the Mallarmé, he put the paper down 
on a roughish book cover. He liked the grain the cover gave him, for 
it was not mechanical, and, when the grain seemed to repeat itself, 
he would shift the drawing, and thus get a new surface. I do not know 
whether he used this thin paper to any extent, but he said he found 
it delightful, if difficult, to work on. He used that afternoon a tiny 
bit of lithographic chalk, holding it in his fingers, and not in a crayon- 
holder as lithographers do. 

“The next day, he took me to the printers, Belfont’s and Lemer- 
cier’s, where he introduced me to M. Duchatel and M. Marty, who was 
preparing L’Estampe Originale, devoting himself to the revival of 
artistic lithography in France. As I remember, the talk was technical, 
when not of the wonders of the apartment in the Rue du Bac—where 
‘Peace threatens to take up her abode in the garden of our pretty 
pavilion,’ Mr. Starr quotes Whistler as saying—and the studio in 
the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, which I did not see until later 
on. He was also planning his colour lithographs, and he explained 
to me his methods, though very few colour-prints were made until 
the next year. He also told me what he thought of printing etchings 
in colour—that it was abominable, vulgar, and stupid. Good black 
or brown ink, on good old paper, had been good enough for Rembrandt, 
it was good enough for him, and it ought to be good enough in the 
future for the few people who care about etching. To-day, when 
the world is swamped with the childish print in colour and the 
preposterous big copper plate, it may be well to remember Whistler’s 
words. His reason for rejecting the etching in colour is as simple 
and rational as his reason for making the lithograph in colour. Litho- 
graphy is a method of surface printing; the colour, rolled on to the 
surface of the stone, is merely rubbed on to, and scrapped off on, the 
1893] 311 


James McNeitt WHISTLER 


paper. In etching or engraving, the colour is first hammered into 
the engraved plate with a dabber and then forced out by excessive 
pressure, fatal to any but the strongest or purest of blacks and browns ; 
and colours, whether printed from one plate or a dozen, must have 
the freshness, the quality, squeezed out of them.” 

He was back in London at the end of December (1892) eating his 
Christmas dinner with his future brother-in-law. He stayed only a 
few days, but long enough to arrange to show Lady Meux: White and 
Black in the first exhibition of the Portrait Painters at the Grafton 
Gallery, early in 1893, and a number of his Venice etchings with the 
destroyed plates at the Fine Art Society’s. 

“‘ We were again in Paris for the Salon of 1893, and found Whistler 
living in the Rue du Bac. Beardsley, MacColl, and ‘ Bob’ Stevenson 
were with us. MacColl and I went to see Whistler in the new studio. 
It was at the top of one of the highest buildings in the Rue Notre- 
Dame-des-Champs, No. 86. As the concierge said, in directing visitors, 
‘On ne peut pas aller plus loin que M. Vistlaire!’ ‘The climb always 
seemed to me endless, and must have done much harm to Whistler’s 
weak heart, though benches were placed on some of the landings 
where, if he had time, he could rest. When we got to the sixth storey 
MacColl knocked. There was a rapid movement across the floor, 
and the door was opened a little. Whistler held his palette and 
brushes between himself and us, and there were excuses of models 
and work. But MacColl felt the brushes, and they were dry, and 
so we got in. 

“ The studio was a big, bare room, the biggest studio Whistler ever 
had. A simple tone of rose on the walls, a lounge, a few chairs, a white- 
wood cabinet for the little drawings and prints and pastels; the blue 
screen with the river, Chelsea church, and the gold moon ; two or three 
easels, nothing on them; rows and rows of canvases on the floor with 
their faces to the wall; in the further corner a printing press—rather 
a printing shop—with inks and papers on shelves ; a little gallery above, 
a room or two opening off; a model’s dressing-room under it, and in 
front, when you turned, the great studio window, with all Paris toward 
the Pantheon over the Luxembourg gardens. There was another 
little room or entrance-hall at the top of the stairs, and opposite another, 
a kitchen. On the front was a balcony with flowers. 

312 [1893 


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ANNABEL LEE 


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In the Charles L. Freer Collection, National Gallery of American Art 
(See page 280) 


(See page 274) 


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“Carmen, his model, was there, and while he showed us some of 
his work she got breakfast, and we stayed a good part of the day. Mrs. 
Whistler came up later. I think she breakfasted with us. I have no 
recollection of what he talked about. But I am sure it was of what 
they had been saying in London, of what they were saying in Paris, 
of what he was doing. That is what it always was. We were all asked 
to lunch the following Sunday at the house. 

*¢ The apartment, No. 110 Rue du Bac, was on the right-hand side, 
just before you reached the Bon Marché, going up the street, from the 
river. You went through a big porte cochére by the concierge’s box, 
down a long, covered tunnel, then between high walls, until you came to 
a courtyard with several doors, a bit of an old frieze in one place and 
a drinking-fountain. Whistler’s door was painted blue, with a brass 
knocker. I do not suppose that then there was another like it in Paris. 
Inside was a little landing with three or four steps down to the floor a 
few feet lower than the courtyard. This room contained nothing, or 
almost nothing, but some trunks (which, as in his other houses, gave the 
appearance of his having just moved in, or being just about to start 
on a journey) and a settee, always covered with a profusion of hats and 
coats. Opposite the entrance a big door opened into a spacious room, 
decorated in simple, flat tones of blue, with white doors and windows, 
furnished with a few Empire chairs and a couch, a grand piano, and a 
table which, like the blue matting-covered floor, was littered with news- 
papers. Once in a while there was a picture of his on the wall. For 
some time, the Venus hung or stood about. There were doors to the 
right and left, and on the far side, a glass door opened on a large 
garden, a real bit of country in Paris. It stretched away in dense 
undergrowth to several huge trees. Later, over the door, there 
was a trellis designed by Mrs. Whistler, and there were flowers every- 
where. ‘In his roses he buried his troubles,’ Mr. Wuerpel writes of 
the garden, and there were many birds, among them, at one time, an 
awful mocking-bird, at another a white parrot which finally escaped, 
and, in a temper, climbed up a tree where no one could get it, and 
starved itself to death to Whistler’s grief. At the bottom of the garden 
were seats. The dining-room was to the right of the drawing-room. 
It was equally simple in blue, only there was blue and white china 
in a cupboard and a big dining-table, round which were more Empire 
1893 | 313 


James McNertt Wuistier 


chairs and in the centre a large, low blue and white porcelain stand, 
on it big bowls of flowers, over it, hanging from the ceiling, a huge 
Japanese something like a birdcage. 

“‘ From Paris, in May, I went down to Caen and Coutances, coming 
back a few weeks later. Beardsley was still in Paris, or had returned, 


and we were both stopping at the Hétel de Portugal et de l’Univers, then 


known to every art student. Wagner was being played at the Opera, 
almost for the first time. Paris was disturbed, there were demonstra- 
tions against Wagner, really against Germany. We went, Beardsley 
wild about Wagner and doing, I think, the drawing of The Wagnerties. 
He had come over to get backgrounds in the rose arbours and the dense 
alleys of the Luxembourg gardens, where Whistler had made his 
lithographs. Coming away from the Opera, we went across to the 
Café de la Paix at midnight. The first person we saw was Whistler. 
He was with some people, but they left soon, and we joined him. 
Beardsley also left almost at once, but not before Whistler had asked 
us to come the next Sunday afternoon to the Rue de Bac. Then, 
for the first time, I learned what he thought of ‘ estheticism’ and 
‘ decadence.’ 

“*¢ Why do you get mixed up with such things? Look at him! 
He’s just like his drawings, he’s all hairs and peacock’s plumes—hairs 
on his head, hairs on his fingers’ ends, hairs in his ears, hairs on his toes. 
And what shoes he wears—hairs growing out of them ! ’ 

“T said, ‘ Why did you ask him to the Rue du Bac ?? ‘ Oh—well 
—well—well!’ And then it was late, or early, and the last thing was, 
‘Well, you’ll come and bring him too.’ 

“Years later, in Buckingham Street, Whistler met Beardsley, and 
got to like not only him, as everybody did, but his work. One night 
when Whistler was with us, Beardsley turned up, as always when he 
went to see anyone, with his portfolio of his latest work under his arm. 
This time it held the illustrations for The Rape of the Lock, which he had 
just made. Whistler, who always saw everything that was being done, 
had seen the Yellow Book, started in 1894, and he disliked it as much 
as he then disliked Beardsley, who was the art editor; he had also 
seen the illustrations to Salomé, disliking them too, probably because 
of Oscar Wilde; he knew many of the other drawings, one of which, 
whether intentionally or unintentionally, was more or less a reminiscence 
314 [1893 


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Paris 


of Mrs. Whistler, and he no doubt knew that Beardsley had made a 
caricature of him which a Follower carefully left in a cab. When 
Beardsley opened the portfolio and began to show us The Rape of the 
Lock, Whistler looked at them first indifferently, then with interest, 
then with delight. And then he said slowly, ‘ Aubrey, I have made a 
very great mistake—you are a very great artist.? And the boy burst 
out crying. All Whistler could say, when he could say anything, was 
*T mean it—I mean it—I mean it !’ 

“On the following Sunday Beardsley and I went to the Rue du Bac, 
Beardsley in a little straw hat like Whistler’s. Whistler was in the 
garden and there were many Americans, and Arséne Alexandre and 
Mallarmé, some people from the British Embassy, and presently Mr. 
Jacomb Hood came, bringing an Honourable Amateur, who asked the 
Whistlers, Beardsley, and myself to dinner at one of the cafés in the 
Champs-Elysees. As we left the Rue du Bac, Whistler whispered to me, 
“Those hairs—hairs everywhere!’ I said to him, ‘ But you were very 
nice and, of course, you’ll come to dinner.’ And, of course, he did not. 

““T was working in Paris, making drawings and etchings of Notre- 
Dame. I was in one of the high old houses of lodgings and studios, 
with cabmen’s cafés and restaurants under them, on the Quai des Grands 
Augustins. I had gone there because of the view of the Cathedral. 
Most of the time I was at work up among the Devils of Notre-Dame, 
using one of the towers as a studio by permission of the Government 
and the Cardinal-Archbishop. One morning—it was in June—l 
heard the puffing and groaning of someone climbing slowly the end- 
less winding staircase, and the next thing I saw was Whistler’s head 
on the stairs. When he got his breath and I had got over my astonish- 
ment, I began to ask why he had come, or he began to explain the 
reason. He had learned where I was staying, and he said he had been 
to the hotel, which, was, well! I think it reminded him of his days au 
sixiéme, for that was the floor I was on. He left a note written on the 
buvette paper, in which he said, ‘ Jolly the place seems to be!’ After he 
had climbed up to my rooms, the patron told him where he possibly 
would find me, and then the people at the foot of the tower said I was up 
above. 

“He told me why he had come up. He was working on a series of 
etchings of Paris, Some were just begun, others ready to bite, but a 
1893] 315 


James McNertt WuIsTLER 


number ought to be printed, and would I help him? I was pleased, 
and I said I would. I took him about among the strange creatures 
that haunt the place, introduced him to the old keeper with his grisly 
tales of suicides and of sticking to the tower through the Commune, 
even when the church was on fire, and showed him the awful bell that, 
at noon, suddenly crashed in our ears, the uncanny cat that perched 
on crockets and gargoyles, tried to catch sparrows with nothing below 
her, and made from one parapet to another flying cuts over space when 
visitors came up. But he did not like it, and was not happy until 
we were seated in the back room of a restaurant across the street. 
He talked about the printing, saying that I could help him, and he could 
teach me. 

“Next morning I was at the Rue du Bac at nine. After I had 
waited for what seemed hours, and had breakfasted with him and Mrs. 
Whistler and we had a cigarette in the garden, where there was an 
American rocking-chair for him—well, after this it was too late to go 
to the studio. He brought out some of the plates which he had been 
working on—the plates of little shops in the near streets—and we looked 
at them, and that was all. So it went on the next day, and the next, 
until on the third or fourth things came to a head, and I told him that 
charming as this life was, either we must print or I must go back to my 
drawing. In five minutes we were in a cab on our way to the studio. 
He understood that, much as I admired his work and appreciated him, 
I could not afford to pay for this appreciation and admiration with 
my time. From the moment this was plain between us, there was no 
interruption to our friendship for the rest of his life. 

“We set to work. He peeled down to his undershirt with short 


sleeves, and I saw in his muscles one reason why he was never tired. — 


He put on an apron. The plates, only slightly heated, if heated at all, 
were inked and wiped, sometimes with his hand, at others with a rag, 
till nearly clean, though a good tone was left. He painted the proofs — 
on the plate with his hand. I got the paper ready on the press and 
pulled the proof, he inking and I pulling all the afternoon. As each 
proof came off the press, he looked at it, not satisfied, for they were all 
weak, and saying ‘ we’ll keep it as the first proof and it will be worth 


something some day.’ Then he put the prints between sheets of — 


blotting-paper, and that night or the next, after dinner, trimmed them e 
SIP [1s93 


PaRIs 


with scissors and put them back between the folded sheets of blotting- 
paper which were thrown on the table and on the floor. Between the 
sheets the proofs dried naturally and were not squashed flat. 

“ The printing went on for several days, he getting more and more 
dissatisfied, until I found an old man, Lamour, at the top of an old 
house in the Rue de la Harpe, who could reground the plates. But 
Whistler did not rebite them and never touched them until long after 
in England. 

‘A number of plates had not been bitten and one hot Sunday 
afternoon he brought them into the garden at the Rue du Bac. A chair 
was placed under the trees and on it a wash-basin into which each plate 
was put. Instead of pouring the diluted acid all over the plate in the 
usual fashion drops were taken from the bottle on a feather, and the 
plate painted with acid. The acid was coaxed, or rather used as one 
would use water-colour, dragged and washed about. Depth and 
strength were got by leaving a drop of acid on the lines where they were 
needed. There was a little stopping-out of passages where greater 
delicacy was required ; when there was any, the stopping-out varnish 
_ was thinned with turpentine, and Whistler, with a camel’s-hair brush, 
painted over the parts that did not need further biting. To me, it 
was a revelation. Sometimes he drew on the plate. Instead of the 
huge crowbar used by most etchers he worked with a perfectly balanced, 
beautifully designed little needle three or four inches long, made for 
him by an instrument-maker in Paris. He always carried several in a 
little silver box. The ground on all the plates was bad and came off, 
and the proofs he pulled afterwards in the studio were not at all what 
he wanted. These were almost the last plates he etched. 

“‘ He was not painting very much, few people came to the studio, 
and he went out little. No one was in the Rue du Bac but Mrs. Whistler 
for a while, and there were complications with the servants and others— 
how people who kept such hours, or no hours, could keep servants 
would have been a mystery had not servants worshipped him. Almost 
daily the petit bleu asking me to dinner would come to me. Or Whistler 
would appear in the morning, if I had not been to him the day before. 
In those early June days I seldom met anyone at the house and we never 
dressed for dinner, possibly because I had no dress clothes with me; he 
would insist on my coming, telling me not to mind the stains or the 
1893 | 317 


James McNettu WuIsTLER 


inkspots! One evening in the garden with them I found a little man, 
a thorough Englishman in big spectacles, with a curious sniff, who was 
holding a hose and watering the plants. He was introduced to me as 
Mr. Webb, Whistler’s solicitor, though in the process we came near 
being drenched by the wobbling hose. It was that evening I first heard 
the chant of the missionary brothers from over the great wall. A 
bell sounded, and as the notes died away a wailing chant arose, went 
on for a little, then died away as mysteriously as it came. Always, 
when it did come, it hushed us. At dinner we should be cosy and 
jolly, Whistler had said in asking me, and we were, and it was arranged 
that we should go the next day to Fontainebleau. 

“‘ They called for me at the hotel in the morning. We drove to 
the Lyons station, Whistler, his wife, Mr. Webb, and I. And Whistler 
had the little paint-box which always went with him, though on these 
occasions it was the rarest thing that he ever did anything, and we got 
to Fountainebleau. We lunched in a garden. We didn’t go to the 
palace, but drove to Barbizon, stopping at Siron’s, through the forest. 


I don’t think the views or the trees interested him at all. He was — 


quiet all the way, but no sooner were we back than we must hunt for 
‘old things’: ‘ here was a palace and great people had lived here, there 
might be silver, there might be blue and white, though really, now, 
you know, you can find better blue and white, and cheaper silver, under 
the noses of the Britons in Wardour Street than anywhere.’ We did 
not find any blue and white, or silver. But there were three folio 


volumes of old paper, containing a collection of dried leaves, which we 


bought and shared, and they were to him more valuable than the palace 
and the Millet studio, which we never saw. 


“It was late when we got back. The servants had gone to bed, 


and Marguery’s and the places where he liked to dine were shut. So 


we bought what we could in the near shops and sat down in the Rue du © 
Bac to eat the supper we had collected. After we had finished | 
witnessed his and Mrs. Whistler’s wills, which Mr. Webb had brought ~ 
with him from London, and for this the long day had been a preparation. _ 
“ Tf I did not always accept Whistler’s invitations he would reproach _ 
me as an awful disappointment and a bad man. IfI did not gotothe 
dinner, to which I was bidden at an hour’s notice, he would tell me 
afterwards of the much cool drink and encouraging refreshment he 
318 [1898 


Paris 


had prepared for me. He always asked me to bring my friends. Mr. 
J. Fulleylove had come over to ‘ do’ Paris and I took him to the Rue du 
Bac; ‘les Pleins d’ Amour,’ Whistler called him and Mrs. Fulleylove, 
whose eyes he was always praising. They were working at St. Denis 
and so was I, and one day Whistler and Mrs. Whistler came in the 
primitive steam tram that starts from the Madeleine to see the place. 
We lunched—badly—and he was bored with the church, though he 
had brought lithograph paper and colours to make a sketch of it. 

“One Sunday Mr. E. G. Kennedy posed in the garden for his 
portrait on a small canvas or panel, and all the world was kept out. I 
had never before seen Whistler paint. He worked away all afternoon, 
hissing to himself, which, Mrs. Whistler said, he did only when things 
were going well. If Kennedy shifted—there were no rests—Whistler 
would scream, and he worked on and on, and the sun went down, and 
Kennedy stood and Whistler painted, and the monks began their chant, 
and darkness was coming on. The hissing stopped, a paint-rag came 
out, and, with one fierce dash, it was all rubbed off. ‘ Oh, well,’ was all 
he said. Kennedy was limbered up and we went to dinner. 

“ After that, almost every night we dined together through that 
lovely June, either with him in the Rue du Bac, or he came with 
Kennedy or me to Marguery’s or La Pérouse—once to St. Germain—or 
somewhere that was delightful. 

“<The summer was famous in Paris for the ‘ Sarah Brown Students’ 
Revolution,’ the row that grew out of the Quat’z Arts Ball. Whistler 
did not take the slightest interest in the demonstrations, in fact, did 
not believe they were taking place, though I used to bring him reports 
of the doings which culminated on July 4, my birthday, when he was 
to have given me a dinner at Marguery’s. I told him the streets of the 
Quarter were barricaded and full of soldiers, but though he ridiculed 
the whole affair, he decided to dine at home and to put off by telegram 
the dinner he had ordered. I went round to the Boulevard St. Germain 
to send the wire and found it barred with soldiers and police, and the 
entire boulevard, as far as one could see, littered with hats and caps, 
sticks and umbrellas. There had been a cavalry charge and this was 
the result. We dined merrily, but Kennedy and I left early. There 
was a great deal of rioting through the night, but that was the end 
of it. 

1893] 319 


James McNertt WHIsTLER 


“Mrs. Whistler had not been well, and they suddenly made up their 
minds to go to Brittany, or Normandy, or somewhere on the coast. 
It was not altogether a successful journey. Nature had gone back 
on him, he wrote me, probably because of his exposure of her ‘ foolish 
sunsets ’?; the weather was for tourists, the sea for gold-fish in a bowl— 
the studio was better than staring at a sea of tin. And the terrible 
things they had eaten in Brittany made them ill. But the lithographs 
at Vitré were made, also the Yellow House, Lannion, and the Red 
House, Paimpol—his first elaborate essays in colour. 

“Only a few impressions of the Yellow House were ever pulled 
owing to some accident to the stone. One of these I wanted to 
buy. Whistler heard of it. ‘Well, you know, very flattering, but 
altogether absurd,’ he told me, and the print came with an inscrip- 
tion and the Butterfly.” 


\ 


CHAPTER XXXVII: PARIS CONTINUED. THE YEARS 
EIGHTEEN NINETY-THREE and EIGHTEEN NINETY-FOUR. 


AFTER this summer, we both saw still more of Whistler whenever we 
were in Paris. At the Rue du Bac we were struck by the few French 
artists at his Sunday afternoons and the predominance of Americans 
and English. It seemed to us that French artists might have been more 
cordial and the French nation more sensible of the fact that a distin- 
guished foreign artist had come to France. During his life at least one 
or two Americans, one a rich amateur, were made Commanders of the 
Legion of Honour, while he remained an Officer. Others were made 
foreign Members of the Academy of Fine Arts, but this, the highest 
honour for artists in France, was never offered to him, nor was he elected 
to International Juries. 

With a few French and foreign artists his relations were friendly : 
Boldini, Helleu, Puvis de Chavannes, Rodin, Alfred Stevens, Aman- — 
Jean; but the greater number were content to express their apprecia- 
tion at a distance. Mrs. Whistler spoke little French, and few French 
artists speak any English. The men whom Whistler saw most were not — 
painters. Viélé-Griffin, Octave Mirbeau, Arséne Alexandre, the Comte — 
de Montesquiou, Rodenbach came to the Rue du Bac. Old friends, — 
420 [1898 


Paris 


Drouet and Duret, were sometimes there, though not often—his inti- 
macy with them and Oulevey was not really renewed until after Mrs. 
Whistler’s death. But of all who came, none endeared himself so much 
to Whistler as Stéphane Mallarmé, poet, critic, friend, admirer. Once, 
at Whistler’s suggestion, he visited us in London, and, looking from our 
windows to the Thames, declared he could understand Whistler better. 
Official people strayed in from the Embassies, mostly English. Ameri- 
can authors and American collectors appeared on Sundays. Mr. 
Howells, once or twice, came with his son and his daughter, of whom 
Whistler made a lithograph. Journalists, English and American, 
wandered in. And English and American artists came, or tried to come, 
in crowds. The younger men of the Glasgow School, James Guthrie 
and John Lavery, were welcomed. Then there were the Americans 
living in Paris: Walter Gay, Alexander Harrison, Frederick Mac- 
Monnies, Edmund H. Wuerpel, John W. Alexander, Humphreys 
Johnston, while Sargent and Abbey rarely missed an opportunity of 
calling at the Rue du Bac. 

Whistler was hardly less cordial to students. Milcendeau has told 
us how he took his work—and his courage—with him and went to 
Whistler, but, reaching the door, stood trembling at the thought of 
meeting the Master and showing his drawings. As soon as Whistler 
saw the drawings his manner was so charming—as if they were just two 
artists together—that fear was forgotten, and Whistler proved his 
interest by inviting Milcendeau to send the drawings to the Inter- 
national. Whistler met American and English students not only at 
home, but at the American Art Association in Montparnasse, then a bit 
of old Paris—a little white house with green shutters, which the street 
had long since left on a lower level, and at the back a garden where, 
under the great trees, the cloth was laid in summer ; just the house to 
please Whistler. He sometimes went to the club’s dinners and celebra- 
tions. At one dinner on Washington’s Birthday, after professional pro- 
fessors and popular politicians had delivered themselves, he was finally 
and rather patronisingly asked to speak by the President, who was either 
an ambassador or a dry-goods storekeeper, the usual patron of American 
art and supporter of American art institutions. Whistler said: “ Now, 
as to teaching. In England it is all a matter of taste, but in France 
at least they tell you which end of the brush to stick in your mouth.” 


1893] x 321 


James McNEiLtt WHISTLER 


Mr. MacMonnies remembers another evening: ‘‘A millionaire 
friend of Whistler’s and mine spoke to me of giving a dinner to the 
American artists in Paris, or rather to Whistler, and inviting the 
Paris American artists. I dissuaded him, by saying they all hated 
one another and would pass the evening more cheerfully by sticking 
forks into one another under the table if they could. Better to invite 
all the young fry—the American students. He gladly went into 
it. You can imagine the wild joy of the small fry, who had, of 
course, never met Whistler. Some got foolishly drunk, others got 
bloated with freshness, but they all had a rare time, and Whistler, who 
sat at the head, more than any, and he was delightfully funny. The 
millionaire was enchanted, and also a distinguished American painter, 
who sat opposite to Whistler and who was much respected by the youth. 
At one pause Whistler said, ‘I went to the Louvre this morning ’"— 
pause, all the youths’ faces wide open, expecting pearls of wisdom and 
points—‘ and I was amazed ’—pause; everybody open-eared—‘ to 
see the amazing way they keep the floors waxed !’” 

There is a story that one day at lunch-time he went into the court- 
yard of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and walked slowly round, only to be 
followed in a few minutes by a single line of students, each carrying a 
mahlstick as he carried his cane, and as many as had them wearing two 
sous pieces for eye-glasses. He stopped and looked at the statues he 
wanted to see and they stopped and looked, and they followed him, 
until the circuit of the court was made, when they bowed each other out, 
and it was not till long after that they learned who he was. American 
students, if not so filled with their own sense of humour, are said to 
have mobbed him on one occasion when he went to a crémerie, upsetting 
tables and chairs to see him. 

Mr. Walter Gay, who was much with Whistler during these years, 
gives us his impressions : 

“ T first knew Whistler in the winter of ’94, when he was established 
in Paris, with the recently married Mrs. Whistler, in his apartment of 


the Rue du Bac. The marriage was a happy one; she appreciated — 


a 


fully his talent, he adored her, and when she died a few years later was — 
crushed at her loss. In spite of the great influence exercised by Whistler _ 


on contemporary art, he was never lionised in Paris as he had been in 


London; Paris is not a place for lions, there are already too many ~ 


322 [1894 


Paris 


local celebrities. Perhaps one of the reasons why the French artists 
held aloof from Whistler was Mrs. Whistler’s very British attitude 
towards the nation. Once at a dinner of French artists given at our 
house in honour of Whistler, Mrs. Whistler expressed the most Gallo- 
phobe sentiments, complaining loudly of the inhospitality of the French 
towards her husband. Although sixty years when I knew him, he had 
the enthusiasm and energy of early years. His handsome grey-blue 
eyes sparkled with the fire of youth—they were young eyes in an old 
face. I think it strange that no one ever seems to emphasise his singular 
beauty. Not only were his features finely cut, but the symmetry of his 
figure, hands, and feet, retained until late in life, was remarkable; in 
youth he must have been a pocket Apollo. His conversational powers 
were extraordinary—he had a Celtic richness of vocabulary. ... He 
was supersensitive to criticism. Those who were either indifferent 
or antipathetic to him, his imagination instantly transformed into 
hidden enemies. That weakness of the artistic temperament, la folie 
de la persécution, was deeply rooted in his nature... . 

** No one can realise, who has not watched Whistler paint, the agony 
his work gave him. I have seen him after a day’s struggle with a 
picture, when things did not go, completely collapse as from an illness. 
His drawing cost him infinite trouble. I have known him work two 
weeks on a hand, and then give it up discouraged. ... My last 
interview with Whistler took place in the spring of 1903, in London, 
about two months before his death. Hearing that he was far from well, 
I went to see him, and found that the rumour was only too well grounded. 
I spent the afternoon with him; he was singularly gentle and affec- 
tionate, and clung to me pathetically as though he too realised that 
it was to be our last meeting in this world. 

*“‘ Whatever his detractors may charge against him, it seems to me 
that Whistler’s faults and weaknesses sprang from an unbalanced 
mentality ; he was a déséquilibré, the common defect of great painters. 
The unusual combination of artistic genius, literary gifts, and social 
attractions which made up Whistler’s personality was unique; there 
was never anybody like him. And there is another quality of his which 
must not be forgotten in the summing up of his character ; underneath 
all his vagaries and eccentricities one felt that indefinable yet unmis- 
takable being—a gentleman.” 

1893-94] 323 


James McNertt WHISsTLER 


Mr. Alexander Harrison shows a different side of Whistler : 
“My meetings with him were frequent and friendly. On one 
occasion, in a moment of excitement, I had the audacity to tell him that 
I felt he ought to have acted differently vts-d-vis a jury of reception. 
His eyes flamed like a rattlesnake’s and I apologised, but insisted, and 
than dodged a little. I afterwards realised that my naive frankness 
had not lowered me in his esteem, as to the last he was nice to me, having 
understood that my admiration for his work was no greater than my 
affectionate regard for him. I have never known a man of more sincere 
and genuine impulse in ordinary human relations.” 

Now that Whistler was established for life, as he hoped, in a fine 
studio, he was making up for the first unsettled years after his marriage. 
He began a number of large portraits in the Rue Notre-Dame-des- 
Champs. In 1893, Mr. A. J. Eddy, known, we believe, to fame and 
Chicago as “the man Whistler painted,” asked Whistler to paint his 
portrait. He could stay in Paris only a few weeks, and Whistler liked 
his American frankness in saying that his portrait must be done by a 
certain date, and, though unaccustomed to be tied to time, Whistler 
agreed. His description of Mr. Eddy was, ‘ Well, you know, he is 
the only man who ever did get a picture out of me on time, while I 
worked and he waited!” Mr. Eddy writes of a sitter, no doubt him- 
self, who was with Whistler “ every day for nearly six weeks and never 
heard him utter an impatient word; on the contrary, he was all kind- 
ness.” And Mr. Eddy describes Whistler painting on in the twilight 
until it was impossible to distinguish between the living man and the 
figure on the canvas. He recalls the memory of those “ glorious ” 
days spent in the studio, of the pleasant hour at noon when painter and 
sitter breakfasted there together, of the long sittings, and the dinner 
after at the Rue du Bac, or in one of the little restaurants where no 
Parisian was more at home than Whistler. But steadily as the work 
went on, the picture was not sent to Chicago until the following year. 
Mr. J. J. Cowan, whose portrait dates from this time, tells us that for 
The Grey Man, a small full-length, he gave sixty sittings, averaging each 
three to four hours. He, like Whistler, was not in a hurry, but, unlike 
Whistler, he eventually got tired, and a model was called in and posed 
in Mr. Cowan’s clothes. The last sittings were in London, three years 
after. Even then Whistler wrote Mr. Cowan that the head needed 
324 | [1893-94 


Paris 


just the one touch, with the sitter there, so that perfection might be 
assured. Another portrait was of Dr. Davenport of Paris. 

The portraits of women were more numerous, and they promised 
to be as fine as those done in the seventies and eighties. The work was 
interrupted by the tragedy of Whistler’s last years, and the more 
important were never completed. For one, Miss Charlotte Williams, 
of Baltimore, sat, but the painting disappeared, and only the rare litho- 
graph of her remains. Another lost portrait was a large full-length of 
Miss Peck, of Chicago, now Mrs. W. R. Farquhar, which we saw in 
many stages, and at last, as it seemed to us, finished. She was painted 
standing, in evening dress, with her long white, green-lined cloak thrown 
back a little, as he had painted Lady Meux. It was full of the charm 
of youth, and the colour was a harmony in silver and green. Miss 
Kinsella, a third American girl who posed in the Rue Notre-Dame-des- 
Champs, and in Fitzroy Street, secured her portrait after Whistler’s 
death. We remember it in the Fitzroy Street studio, when it was so 
perfect that one more day’s work would ruin it. In no other did he 
ever paint flesh with such perfection. Face and neck had the golden 
tone of Titian, with a subtlety of modelling beyond the Venetian’s 
powers, for in his later years it was to surpass the Venetians he was try- 
ing. One day when E. went to the studio he had just scraped down neck 
and bust, for no reason except that he could not get the hand to come 
right with the rest. It was to be lovelier than ever, he said. It was 
never repainted. It remains but a shadow of its loveliness, When M. 
Rodin saw it at the London Memorial Exhibition, he praised neck and 
bust to J. as “ a beautiful suggestion of lace,” so beautiful in tone and 
modelling it still is. That posing for Whistler was difficult we know 
from these ladies and many of his other sitters, as well as from our ex- 
perience. Over and over, when he wanted to work on their portraits, he 
would telegraph to the last address he happened to have, though some- 
_ times the telegrams did not reach them till weeks after in some distant 
part of the world, The fact that his sitters were not always waiting for 
him not only upset him temporarily, but sometimes stopped the subject 
altogether. One incident in connection with the portrait of Miss Kin- 
sella amused him. She holds anirisin her hand. A real flower was got, 
but the flower would fade, and irises were not easy to obtain. So he 
went to Liberty’s to get some stuff of the purple-violet tone he wanted 
1894] 325 


James McNertt WuisTLeR 


out of which to make a flower. He explained what he needed to the 
shopman, who solemnly informed him that Messrs. Liberty only kept 
** art colours.” 

Portraits of Mrs. Charles Whibley were in progress about the same 
time: L’Andalouse, Mother of Pearl and Silver, the unfinished Tulzp, 
Rose and Gold, and Red and Black, The Fan. Two others of this period 
are of Mrs. Walter Sickert, Green and Violet, the second for which she 
sat, and Lady Eden, Brown and Gold. He was also painting his own 
portrait in the white jacket, which was changed into a black coat after 
Mrs. Whistler’s death, and a full-length in a long brown overcoat shown 
in 1900 and not since. 

The large canvases had to be left when he shut up the studio, but 
he could carry his little portfolio of lithographic paper and box of chalks 
everywhere, and during those two or three years he developed the art of 
lithography as no one had before, he and Fantin-Latour being the two 
chief factors in the revival of lithography in the nineties. He was 
determined, he said, to make ‘‘ a roaring success of it.” In the streets 
and at home he was constantly at work, and the result is the series of 
lithographs of the shops and gardens and galleries of Paris and many 
portraits. His interest in technique was tireless. He experimented on 
transfer-paper and on stone. He hunted old paper as strenuous people 
hunt lions. Drawings and proofs were for ever in the post between 
Paris and London, where the Ways were transferring and printing for 
him, and friends were for ever bringing paper from London or carrying 
drawings tremblingly back from Paris. He was deep in experiments 
with colour, and a few of the lithographs for Songs on Stone, already 
announced by Mr. Heinemann, were at last ready. They were proved 
in Paris by Belfont, but his shop closed in 1894, printer and stones 
vanished, and this was the end of the proposed publication. Since 


Whistler’s death mysterious prints in black-and-white from the key — 


stones have turned up in Germany, but only a few prints in colour 
remain, no two alike, trials in colour. He had looked for great things : 
“You know, J mean them to wipe up the place before I get done,” 
he said, and their loss was a severe disappointment. Other.lithographs, 
made then or later, were published in the Studio, the Art Fournal, 
L’Estampe Originale, L’Imagier, the Pagenat, and one in our Lithography 
and Lithographers. We never wanted to keep his work, no matter in 


326 [1894 


TRIALS AND GRIEFS 


what medium, from the public. With commissions and experiments 
keeping him busy in Paris, Whistler was, as he wrote to us in London, 
working from morning to night, and in a condition for it he wouldn’t 
change for anything. He was compelled to change it only too soon. 


CHAPTER XXXVIII: TRIALS AND GRIEFS. THE YEARS 
EIGHTEEN NINETY-FOUR TO EIGHTEEN NINETY-SIX. 


In 1894 interruptions came, some slight, but one so serious that life 
and work were never the same again. 

A tedious annoyance was caused by Du Maurier’s Trilby in Harper’s 
Magazine. Du Maurier represented the English students at Carrel’s 
(Gleyre’s) as veritable Crichtons, while Whistler, under the name of 
Joe Sibley, was ridiculed. Du Maurier’s drawings left no doubt as 
to the identity, for in one Whistler wears the chapeau bizarre over his 
curls. Another shows him running away from a studio fight, and 
the text is more offensive. Joe Sibley is “‘the Idle Apprentice,’ 
the King of Bohemia, le rot des truands, to whom everything was 
forgiven, as to Francois Villon, 4 cause de ses gentillesses . . . Always 
in debt . .. vain, witty, and a most exquisite and original artist 

- with an unimpeachable moral tone. ... Also eccentric in his 
attire . . . the most irresistible friend in the world as long as his 
friendship lasted, but that was not for ever. . .. His enmity would 
take the simple and straightforward form of trying to punch his 
ex-friend’s head; and when the ex-friend was too big he would get 
some new friend to help him. . . . His bark was worse than his bite 
. . . he was better with his tongue than his fists. . . . But when he 
met another joker he would just collapse like a pricked bladder. He 
is now perched on such a topping pinnacle (of fame and notoriety 
combined) that people can stare at him from two hemispheres at 
guce.”” 

Du Maurier had posed as a friend for years, and in the Pall Mall 
Gazette Whistler protested against the insult. Du Maurier, to an 
interviewer, expressed surprise; he thought the description of Joe 
Sibley would recall the good times in Paris, and he pretended to be 
amazed that Whistler did not agree. He claimed that he was one of 
1894-95] 227 


James McNeitut WHISTLER 


Whistler’s victims, and quoted Sheridan Ford’s pirated edition of 
The Gentle Art: 

“It was rather droll. Listen: ‘Mr. Du Maurier and Mr. Wilde 
happening to meet in the rooms where Mr. Whistler was holding his 
first exhibition of Venice etchings, the latter brought the two face to 
face, and, taking each by the arm, inquired, “‘ I say, which one of you 
two invented the other, eh?” The obvious retort to that, on my part, 
would have been that, if he did not take care, I would invent hzm, 
but he had slipped away before either of us could get a word out... . 
I did what I did in a playful spirit of retaliation for this little jibe about 
me in his book.” 

The editor of Harper’s had not understood the offensive nature 
of the passages. Whistler called his attention to them, and an apology 
was published in the magazine (January 1895), the number was sup- 
pressed, and Du Maurier was compelled to omit them, and to change 
Joe Sibley to Bald Anthony in the book. Whistler, when the changes 
were submitted to him, was satisfied. But he said: 

“Well, you know, what would have happened to the new Thackeray 
if I hadn’t been willing ? But I was gracious, and I gave my approval 
to the sudden appearance in the story of an Anthony, tall and stout 
and slightly bald. The dangerous resemblance was gone. And | 
wired—well, you know, ha ha!—I wired to them over in America 
compliments and complete approval of author’s new and obscure 
friend, Bald Anthony!” 

Trilby was burlesqued at the Gaiety, and Whistler was dragged 
in as The Stranger. His hat, overcoat, eye-glass, curls, and cane were 
copied, but no one paid the slightest attention, and The Stranger 
vanished after the first night. 

Sometimes Whistler found insult where none was intended, as 
in the case of a Bibliography compiled in 1895 for the Library Bulletin 
of the University of the State of New York—all the copies burnt, we 
hear, in the fire at the State Capitol, Albany. It was an appreciation, 
but it contained inaccuracies and quoted as authorities critics he ob- 
jected to, and he was more vexed by it than there was need. Another 
annoyance was an anonymous article in McClure’s Magazine ; Whistler, 
Painter and Comedian (September 1896). He demanded an apology 
and the suppression of the article, and both were granted. And so 
328 [1894-95 


- 


PORTRAIT OF MISS KINSELLA 
THE IRIS, ROSE AND’ GREEN 


OIL 


In the possession of Miss Kinsella 


(See page 325) 


WHISTLER AT HIS PRINTING PRESS IN THE STUDIO, 
RUE NOTRE-DAME-DES-CHAMPS 
From a photograph by M. Dornac 


(See page 311) 


TRIALS AND GRIEFS 


it went on to the end; he was continually coming upon references 
to himself, disfigured by misunderstanding, misrepresentation, and 
malice. 

These worries occupied his time and tried his temper. But he was 
overwhelmed late in 1894 by a trouble infinitely more tragic. His 
wife was taken ill with the terrible disease, cancer. They came to 
London to consult the doctors in December. First they stayed at 
Long’s Hotel in Bond Street, Mrs. Whistler surrounded by her numerous 
sisters, the two Paris servants, Louise and Constant, in attendance ; 
then Mrs. Whistler was under a doctor’s care in Holles Street, and 
Whistler stopped with his brother in Wimpole Street. Those who 
loved him would like to forget his misery during the weeks and months 
that followed. Work was going on somehow; not painting, that 
waited in Paris, but lithography—several portraits of Lady Haden, 
a drawing in Wellington Street, and others. But he told Mr. Way 
afterwards that he wanted them all destroyed; he should not have 
worked when his heart was not in it: ‘‘ It was madness on my part.” 
He brought proofs to show us. Almost every afternoon he would 
take J. to Way’s, where the lithographs were being transferred to the 
stone and printed. He would lunch or dine with us, keeping up his 
brave front, though we knew what was in his heart. He had not been 
in his ‘ Palatial Residence ” two years before it was closed, and the 
canvases were left untouched in the “ Stupendous Studio.” New 
honours and new successes came: in 1894 the Temple Gold Medal 
from the Pennsylvania Academy, in 1895 a Gold Medal from Antwerp, 
and innumerable commissions. It was just as fortune smiled that the 
blow fell. 

The Eden trial, which struck many as an unnecessary and almost 
farcical episode in his life, distracted him during these tragic months. 
His work ceased for weeks at a time, and he devoted himself to the 
case. His journeys to Paris were frequent and his correspondence 
enormous. The case was fought out in the courts of France. It 
arose out of the uncertainty as to the price which Sir William Eden 
should pay for his wife’s portrait. He was introduced to Whistler 
by Mr. George Moore, to whom Whistler had mentioned one hundred 
to one hundred and fifty pounds for a sketch in water-colour or pastel. 
Whistler became interested in his sitter and made a small full-length 
1894-95] 329 


James McNeitt WHISTLER 


oil, for which he would have asked a far larger sum. His irritation 
can be understood when Sir William Eden attempted to make him 
accept as “a valentine ’—for it was paid on February 14—one hundred 
pounds in a sealed envelope. Whistler felt that the amount should have 
been left to him to decide. He refused to give up the picture, he cashed 
the cheque, and he did not return the money until legal proceedings 
were taken by the Baronet. Before the case came into court he 
wiped out the head. Even his friends thought that Whistler made 
a grave mistake and prejudiced his case when he cashed the cheque, 
instead of throwing it after the Baronet, who, on his hasty retreat 
from the studio, Whistler said, protested and threatened all the way 
down the six flights, while he from the top urged the Baronet not to 
expose his nationality by so unseemly a noise in a public place. 

Whistler went to Paris for the trial before the Civil Tribunal on 
March 6, 1895. His advocates were Maitre Ratier, by whose side he 
sat in court, and Maitre Beurdeley, a collector of his etchings. Sir 
William Eden failed to appear. Whistler was ordered to deliver the 
portrait as painted, a penalty to be imposed in case of delay ; to refund 
twenty-five hundred francs, his lowest price; to pay in addition one 
thousand francs damages. The judge stated that he was in honour 
bound not to deface the portrait after he had completed it, and that 
an artist must carry out his contract. 

To Whistler the judgment was unjust ; he appealed in the Cour de 
Cassation, and the matter dragged on until after Mrs. Whistler’s death. 
In England “ An Artist ” (J.) tried to raise a fund to pay the expenses 
of the trial, in order ‘‘ to show in some practical form artists’ appre- 
ciation for the genius of James McNeill Whistler.” His appeal was 
responded to by only one other artist, Mr. Frederick MacMonnies, 
and was as unsuccessful as the subscription started after the Ruskin 
trial in 1878. 

Mr. George Moore had been the go-between when the portrait 
was commissioned, Sir William Eden’s ally in the legal business, and a 
conspicuous figure in the newspaper muddle. After the trial Whistler 
wrote Moore a scathing letter. Moore’s answer was to taunt Whistler 
with old age. This was published in the Pall Mall Gazette and 
reprinted in French papers. Whistler was in France and he sent 
Moore a challenge. Whistler’s seconds were M. Octave Mirbeau and ~ 
330 [1895 


TRIALS AND GRIEFS 


M. Viélé-Griffin. Their challenge remained unanswered, but after 
several days Moore relieved his feelings to a reporter. London looked 
upon the challenge as Whistler’s crowning joke. It was no joke to 
Moore, who was sufficiently conversant with French manners to know 
how his conduct would be received in Paris. Whistler’s seconds sent 
a proces verbal to the Press, stating that they had waited eight days for 
an answer, and not having received one, they considered their mission 
terminated. 

Thus before the world Whistler kept up the game, though in the 
Rue du Bac life was a tragedy. Mrs. Whistler had returned more ill 
than ever. Miss Ethel Philip was married from the house early in 
the summer to Mr. Charles Whibley, and her sister, Miss Rosalind 
Birnie Philip, took her place. 

After the trial Whistler went back to work. He sent The Little 
White Girl to the International Exhibition at Venice; he exhibited 
the second portrait of Mrs. Sickert at the Glasgow Institute ; he chose 
six lithographs for the Centenary Exhibition in Paris. A head of 
Carmen, his model, was ready for the Portrait Painters in London. 
When in the late summer he returned to England, and, with Mrs. 
Whistler, settled at the Red Lion Hotel, Lyme Regis, he arranged 
a show of his lithographs in London. The Society of Illustrators, of 
which he was Vice-President, was preparing an anthology, The London 
Garland, edited by W. E. Henley, illustrated by members, and published 
by Messrs. Macmillan. J. asked him to contribute an illustration to 
a sonnet of Henley’s. But he had to abandon this plan and allow a 
Nocturne to be reproduced. He made several lithographs at Lyme 
Regis : glowing forges, dark stables with horses an animal painter 
would envy, the smith, and the landlord. ‘* Absolute failures, some,”’ 
he told us sadly; “ others, well, you know, not bad!” Two of the 
pictures painted at Lyme Regis are masterpieces: Lhe Little Rose of 
Lyme Regis and The Master Smith. In these he solved the problem 
of carrying on his work as he wished until it was finished. There also 
he painted the only large landscape we know of: the white houses of 
the town, the hill-side with trees beyond. 

While he was still in Dorset a prize was awarded him at Venice. 
Several prizes in money were given in different sections to artists of 
different nationalities. Whistler was awarded two thousand five 
1895] 331 


James McNEILL WHISTLER 


hundred francs by the City of Murano, the seventh on the list. He 
knew the “‘ enemies,” foresaw the prattle there would be of the seventh- 
hand compliment, and forestalled it by explaining in the Press how the 
prizes had been awarded, his being equal to the first. 

The exhibition of his lithographs was held at the Fine Art Society’s 
in December 1895. Seventy were shown, mostly of the work of the last 
few years, and J. wrote an introduction to the catalogue, the only time 
he asked anybody to “ introduce ” him. There were no decorations in 
the gallery, nor was the catalogue in brown paper, save twenty-five 
copies, but the prints were in his frames. English artists became 
interested in lithography because they were asked to contribute to the 
Centenary Exhibition in Paris, and, at the call of Leighton, they tried 
their hands at it, more or less unsuccessfully. The contrast was great 
between their work shown at Mr. Dunthorne’s gallery and Whistler’s, 
whose prints alone are destined to live. | 

Whistler derived little pleasure from his triumph. The winter 
was spent moving from place to place. His plans were made to go to 
New York to consult an American specialist, forgetting as well as he 
could “ the vast far-offness ” of America. But he stayed in London, 
first at Garlant’s Hotel, then in apartments in Half-Moon Street, 
later at the De Vere Gardens Hotel, and then at the Savoy. Work of 
one sort or another marked these moves ;: the lithograph of Kensington 
Gardens from the De Vere Hotel ; at the Savoy most pathetic drawings 
of his wife, The Siesta and By the Balcony, and the Thames from the 
hotel windows. He had during the first months no studio in London. 
He worked for a while in Mr. Walter Sickert’s ; Mr. Sargent lent his 
early in 1896, when there was talk of a lithograph of Cecil Rhodes and 
a portrait of Mr. A. J. Pollitt, of whom he made a lithograph, though 
the painting, begun later in Fitzroy Street, was destroyed. 

He interested himself in the experiments of others. In the winter 
of 1895 J. was asked by the Daily Chronicle to edit the illustration of 
a series of articles on London in support of the Progressive County 
Council. It was an event of importance to illustrators, process-men, 
and printers: the first effort in England for the artistic illustration 
of a daily paper. The Daily Graphic was illustrated, but its draughts- 
men were trained to adapt their drawings to the printer. The scheme 
now was to oblige the printer to adapt himself to the illustrator. Every 
332 [1895-96 


TRIALS AND GRIEFS 


illustrator of note in London contributed. Burne-Jones’ frontispiece 
to William Morris’ News from Nowhere was enlarged and printed 
successfully. J. asked Whistler to let him try the experiment of 
enlarging one of the Thames etchings. Whistler was interested. 
Black Lion Wharf was selected and printed in the Daily Chronicle, 
February 22, 1895, the very day of the month, Washington’s Birthday, 
when, ten years later, the London Memorial Exhibition opened. With 
its publication the success of the series was complete, not politically, 
for the twenty-four drawings were said to have lost the Progressives 
twenty-five seats. The etching stood the enlarging superbly. J. made 
the proprietors pay for the print, the first time Whistler was paid for 
the use of one of his works not made as an illustration. 

Whistler came to us almost daily. Late one afternoon he brought 
his transfer-paper, and made a lithograph of J. as he sprawled com- 
fortably, and uncomfortably had to keep the pose, in an easy-chair 
before the fire. Whistler made four portraits in sucession of J. and 
one of E., each in an afternoon. He drew on as the light faded, and 
the portrait of E. was done while the firelight flickered on her face 
and on his paper. Then he told us he had taken a studio in Fitzroy 
Street to paint a large full-length of J. in a Russian cloak—The Russian 
Schube—which he thought the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts 
might like to have. But J. was called away, Mrs. Whistler grew rapidly 
worse, the scheme was dropped never to be taken up again. 

On other afternoons he and J. would go to Way’s, where the Savoy 
drawings were put on the stone. The lithotint of The Thames was 
done on a stone sent to the hotel. Drawings made in Paris, Lyme 
Regis, London were transferred and gone all over with chalk, stump, 
scraper. He worked in a little room adjoining Mr. Way’s office, the 
walls of which were covered with pastels and water-colours by him 
and C. E. Holloway. There he drew the portraits of Mr. Thomas 
Way in the firelight, never stopping until dark, when Mr. Way would 
bring out some rare old liqueur, and there was a rest before he hurried 
back to the Savoy. His nights were spent sitting up by his wife. He 
slept a little in the morning and usually came to us in the afternoon, 
at times so exhausted that we feared more for him than for her. 

The studio at No. 8 Fitzroy Street was a huge place at the back 
of the house, one flight up, reached by a ramshackle glass-roofed 
1895-96 ] 333 


James McNett WHIsTLER 


passage. The portrait of Mr. Pollitt was started and one of Mr 
Robert Barr’s daughter, which has disappeared. Mr. Cowan sat again, 
and another was begun of Mr. S. R. Crockett, who describes the sittings : 

“I don’t think he liked me at first. Someone had told him I was 
a Philistine of Askelon. . . . He told me lots about his early times 
in London and Paris, but all in fragments, just as the thing occurred 
to him. Like an idiot, I took no notes. Lots, too, about Carlyle 
and his sittings, as likely to interest a Scot. He had got on unexpectedly 
well with True Thomas, chiefly by letting him do the talking, and never 
opening his mouth, except when Carlyle wanted him to talk. Carlyle 
asked him about Paris, and was unexpectedly interested in the cafés, 
and so forth. Whistler told him the names of some—Riche, Anglais, 
Véfour, and Foyot and Lavenue on the south side. Carlyle seemed 
to be mentally taking notes. Then he suddenly raised his head and 
demanded, ‘ Can a man get a chop there ?” 

“¢ Concerning my own sittings, he was very particular that I should 
always be in good form—‘ trampling ’ as he said—otherwise he would 
tell me to go away and play. ... Mr. Fisher Unwin had arranged 
for a lithograph, but Whistler said he would make a picture like a post- 
age stamp, and next year all the exhibitions would be busy as anthills 
with similar ‘ postage stamp’ portraits. ‘Some folk think life-size 
means six foot by three; Ill show them!’ he said more than once. 
I wanted to shell out as he went on, and once, being flush (new book 
or something), I said I had fifty pounds which was annoying me, and 
I wished he would take it. He was very sweet about it, and said he 
understood. Money burnt a hole in his pocket, too, but he could 
not take any money, as he might never finish the work. Any day his 
brush might drop, and he could not do another stroke. 

“It was a bad omen! His wife grew worse. He sent me word 
not to come. She died, and I never saw him after. I wish you could 
tell me what became of that picture. He called it The Grey Man.” 

This is another example of Whistler’s repetition of titles. Mr. 
Cowan’s portrait, painted the same year, was The Grey Man too. Of 
Mr. Crockett’s, Whistler said to us that Crockett was delighted with it 
as far as it had gone, and he was rather pleased with it himself. He 
painted several of these small full-lengths, which were to show the 
fallacy of the life-size theory and of the belief that the importance of 


334 [1896 


eeits 


TRIALS AND GRIEFS 


a portrait depends on the size of the canvas. Kennedy, after the 
portrait destroyed in Paris, stood for a second, now in the Metropolitan 
Museum; Mr. Arnold Hannay for another; C. E. Holloway for The 
Philosopher, which Whistler considered particularly successful. 

In the spring Whistler moved his wife from the Savoy to St. Jude’s 
Cottage, Hampstead Heath, rented from Canon and Mrs. Barnett. After 
this he began to give up hope. It was a sad day when for the first time 
he admitted, ‘‘ We are very, very bad.” And we understood that the 
end was near the afternoon when he, the most fastidious, appeared 
wearing one black and one brown shoe, and explaining that he had a 
corn. But, indeed, many times it seemed as if in his despair he did 
not know what he was doing. The last day Mr. Sydney Pawling met 
him walking, running across the Heath, looking at nothing, seeing 
no one. Mr. Pawling, alarmed, stopped him. ‘“ Don’t speak! Don’t 
speak! It is terrible! ” he said, and was gone. That was the end. 

Mrs. Whistler died on May Io and was buried at Chiswick on the 
14th. We have heard that the funeral was arranged for the 13th, 
but Whistler, objecting to the date, postponed it a day, and Mrs. 
Whistler was buried on her birthday. He never would do anything on 
the 13th if he could help it. 

We were abroad, but the first Sunday after E.’s return he came 
and asked her to go with him to the National Gallery. There he 
showed her the pictures “ Trixie ” loved, standing long before Tinto- 
retto’s Milky Way, her favourite. There was no talk about pictures— 
Canaletto was barely looked at—there was no talk about anything, 
and the tragedy that could not be forgotten was never referred to. 
But M. Paul Renouard was in the Gallery and came to Whistler with 
the word of comfort, from which he shrank. During the first few 
months after Mrs. Whistler’s death, in the shock of his sorrow and 
loss, Whistler made her sister, Miss Rosalind Birnie Philip, his ward, 
and drew up a new will appointing her his heiress and executrix ; 
eventually cancelling his former bequests, and leaving everything to 
her absolutely. 


1896] 335 


James McNeriit WuisTLeR 


CHAPTER XXXIX: ALONE. THE YEAR EIGHTEEN 
NINETY-SIX. , 


WHISTLER stayed a short time at Hampstead with his sisters-in-law, 
and then went to Mr. Heinemann at Whitehall Court, where he 
remained, on and off, for two or three years, spending only the periods 
of Mr. Heinemann’s absence at Garlant’s Hotel or in Paris. He was 
with us day after day. Little notes came from the studio to ask if 
we would be in and alone in the evening, and, if so, he would dine 
with us. At first he would not join us if we expected anyone. He 
liked to sit and talk, he said, but he could not meet other people. He 
saw few outside the studio, except Mr. Heinemann, Mr. Kennedy, 
and ourselves. We went to the studio, and often he and J. sketched 
together in the streets. 

For these sketching expeditions Whistler prepared beforehand the 
colours he wanted to use, and if the day turned out too grey or too 
radiant for his scheme nothing was done. The chosen colours were 
mixed, and little tubes, filled with them, were carried in his small 
paint-box, which held also the tiny palette with the pure colours 
arranged on it, his brushes, and two or three small panels. Many 
studies were made. The most important was of St. John’s, West- 
minster. He loved the quiet corner, now destroyed, and he went 
there many times. He worked away, his top hat jammed down on 
his nose, sitting on a three-legged stool, his paint-box on his knee, 
the panel in it, beginning at once in colour on the panel, usually finishing 
the sketch in one afternoon, though he took two over the church. 
The painting was simply done, commencing with the point of interest, 
the masses put in bigly, the details worked into them. Just as in the 
studio, five minutes after he had begun he became so absorbed in his 
work that he forgot everything else until it grew too dark to see. When 
ladies would come and recognise him, he stopped, got up, and spoke to 
them, always charmingly. 

He made little journeys during the summer, one to Rochester 
and Canterbury, with Mrs. Whibley and Miss Birnie Philip. But, 
disgusted with the inns and the food, he came back after a day or 
so. Another was with Mr, Kennedy, who writes us : 

336 [1896 


ILLUSTRATION TO LITTLE JOHANNES 
PORTRAIT 


DRAWINGS ON WOOD 


In the Pennell Collection, Library of Congress, Washington 


(See page 270) 


soduoj] JouyIOW “stp, Aq pouvo'y 
Ad VOSGNVI YNOTOO-AALVM 


ALONE 


“It was agreed that Whistler and myself should go to France. 
Neither of us had any idea where we were going except to Havre. 
We arrived in the early morning, and after he got shaved and had coffee, 
we took the boat to Honfleur, which, as you know, has a tidal service. 
‘Do you know where we are going?’ I said to him. ‘No, I don’t,’ 
said he. ‘ Well,’ said I, ‘there is a white-whiskered, respectable- 
looking old gentleman ; perhaps he knows the lay of the ground. Tip 
him a stave.’ 

“So Whistler asked him about the hotels in Honfleur. There were 
two—the Cheval Blanc on the quay, and the Ferme de St. Siméon 
on the outskirts. The Cheval was so dirty that I got the only cab, 
and, piling the luggage on it ourselves, drove off to the farm. Fortu- 
nately, there were two vacant rooms, and we stayed there a week. 
The cooking was excellent, and, of course, Madame knew who Monsieur 
Vistlaire was. Whistler used to kick up a row every night with me 
about the ‘ ridiculous British ’ to divert his mind, I imagine, and some- 
times my retorts were so sharp that I said to myself, ‘ All is over between 
us now.’ But he used to bob up serenely in the morning, as if nothing 
had happened, and after déjeuner he would take his small box of colours 
and paint in the large church. [used to stroll about the town and look 
in occasionally to see that he came to no harm. It was here that he 
said he was going over to Rome some day, and when I said, ‘ Don’t 
forget to let me know, so that I may be on hand to see you wandering 
up the aisle in sackcloth and ashes, with a candle in each hand, or 
scrubbing the floor!’ he said, in a tone of horrified astonishment, 
‘Good God! O’K.,* is it possible? Why, I thought they would 
make me a hell of a swell of an abbot, or something like that.’ 

“It was amusing to see him manceuvre to get near the big kitchen 
fire, overcoat on. He was a true American in his liking for heat, and 
the way he would sidle into the kitchen, which opened on out-of-doors, 
all the time mildly flattering Madame, was very characteristic. We 
went to Trouville one day on the diligence, and had a capital déjeuner 
at the Café de Paris, before which Whistler said,'‘ We must do this 
en Prince, O’K.!? ‘ All right, your Highness, I’m with you!’ After- 


* Whistler never lost his fancy for inventing names for his friends, and O’K. 
was the one he found for Mr. Kennedy, rarely calling him by any other either in 
conversation or correspondence. 


1896] Y 239 


James McNertt WHIsTLER 


wards, on the beach, he went to sleep on a chair, leaning back against 
a bath-house, his straw hat tipped on his nose. It was funny, but sleep 
after luncheon was a necessity to him. Coming back to London, in 
the harbour of Southampton, after listening to the usual unwearying 
talk against the British, I said, ‘Oh, be reasonable!’ ‘ Why should 
Pepe eaidthe.2 

The Ferme de St. Siméon has been called the Cradle of Impres- 
sionism. It was here that Boudin lived and most of the Impressionists 
came, and round about they found their subjects. 

Later on Whistler spent a few days at Calais in the Meurice, Sterne’s 
Hotel, where he was miserable. Then he tried to find J. at Whitby, 
where they missed each other, and where he said the glitter of the 
windows made the town look like the Crystal Palace. 

Whistler recovered slowly, and journeys helped him less than work 
in the studio, where, by degrees, he returned to the schemes so sadly 
interrupted. We remember his coming to us with Mr. Kennedy 
one Sunday afternoon, bringing up our three flights of stairs The 
Master Smith to show it to us once again before it went to America. 
Mr. Kennedy had captured it, fearful of a touch being added. It was 
placed on one chair, Whistler, on another facing it, wretched at the 
thought of parting with it. It was always a wrench to let a picture go. 

After a while he did not mind meeting a few people. A man he 
liked to see was Timothy Cole. There was a great scheme that he 
should make a series of drawings on wood and Cole engrave them. 
Cole brought the blocks prepared for him to draw on. But that is 
the last we or Cole heard about it, though we saw the blocks frequently — 
at Fitzroy Street. Mr. Cole says: 

“‘T did not speak to him more than once after I had given him the 
wood blocks. I did not think it prudent to press him about the matter, — 
fearing he might get disgusted and give it up. . . . The blocks were © 
the size of the Century page.” q 

Cole gave Whistler some of his prints, and they pleased Whistler — 
very much, though he rarely cared to own the pictures and prints of 
other artists. Once when an etcher gave him a not very wonderful ~ 
proof, he tore it up, saying, “I do not collect etchings, I make them ! 
I do not collect the works of my contemporaries !””? With the exception 
of his portrait by Boxall we never saw a scrap of anyone else’s work — 
338 [1896 


aD = ie 
TO a a ES te sie 


ALONE 


about his studio or his house, save the forgery someone sent him which 
he kept and hung for a while. Another side to Mr. Cole was his end- 
less practical jokes. He used to do extraordinary things, to Whistler’s 
amusement. On one point only they were not in sympathy: Mr. 
Cole’s theories of diet. One evening at dinner Cole told us that he 
and his family were living chiefly on rhubarb tops, they have such 
a “foody” taste, his son thought. ‘“ Dear me, poor fellow,” said 
Whistler, “it sounds as if once, long long ago, he had really eaten, 
and still has a dim memory of what food is!” ‘ And spinach,” Cole 
added, “it’s fine. We eat it raw, it’s wonderful the things it does for 
you!” “ But what does it do for you?” Whistler asked, and Cole 
began a dissertation on the juices of the stomach. ‘‘ Well, you know,” 
Whistler told him, “ when you begin to talk about the stomach and its 
juices, it’s time to stop dining.” After that Cole managed to dismiss 
his theories and dine like other people when with us. 

Professor John Van Dyke was in London that fall, and Whistler 
was willing to come to meet him. A long darn in a tablecloth after- 
wards bore witness to the animation of one of those dinners—Whistler’s 
knife brought down sharply on the table to emphasise his argument. 
The subject was Las Menifias, which he had never seen, which everyone 
else had seen. Velasquez painted the picture just as you see it, he 
maintained ; no one agreed. Perspectives and plans were drawn on 
the unfortunate cloth, chairs were pushed back, the situation grew 
critical. Whistler was forced to yield slowly, when, of a sudden, his 
eyes fell on Van Dyke’s feet in long, pointed shoes, then the American 
fashion, their points carried to a degree of fineness no English boot- 
maker could rival. “‘ My God, Van Dyke, where did you get your shoes?” 
Whistler asked. We could not go on fighting after that ; defeat was 
avoided. Though Whistler had never been to Madrid, it seemed as 
if he had seen the pictures, so familiar was he with them, and though 
he was at times not right about them, his interest was endless. We 
remember “ Bob” Stevenson telling him, to his great delight, how, 
one summer day with J. in the Long Gallery of the Prado where Las 
Menifias then hung, an old peasant dressed in faded blue-green came 
and sat down on the green bench in front, and straightway he became 
part of the picture, so true was its atmosphere. There are legends 
of Whistler’s descent into a Casa des Huespedes in Madrid with Sargent 
1896] 339 


James McNeiLtt WHIsTLER 


and J., but J. never was there and Sargent denies it. It is another 
legend. Whistler could get more from a glance at a photograph than 
most painters from six months’ copying. 

Another evening Claude was the subject—Claude compared to 
Turner. Whistler could never see the master Englishman adored in 
Turner ; not because of Ruskin, for Mr. Walter Greaves told us that 
years before the Ruskin trial Whistler “‘ reviled Turner.” Mr. Cole 
in 1896 was engraving Turners in the National Gallery, and Whistler 
insisted on their inferiority to the Claudes, so amazingly demonstrated 
in Trafalgar Square, where Turner invited the comparison disastrous 
to him. The argument grew heated, and Whistler adjourned it until 
the next morning, when he arranged to meet Cole and J. in the Gallery. 
Whistler compared the work of the two artists hanging side by side, 
as Turner wished : 

“Well, you know, you have only to look. Claude is the artist 
who knows there is no painting the sun itself, and so he chooses the 
moment after the sun has set, or has hid behind a cloud, and its light 
fills the sky, and that light he suggests as no other painter ever could. 
But Turner must paint nothing less than the sun, and he sticks on a blob 
of paint—let us be thankful that it isn’t a red wafer, as in some of his 
other pictures—and there isn’t any illusion whatever, and the English- 
man lifts up his head in ecstatic conceit with the English painter, who 
alone has dared to do what no artist would ever be fool enough to 
attempt! And look at the architecture. Claude could draw a classical 
building as it is; Turner must invent, imagine architecture as no 
architect could design it, and no builder could put it up, and as it never 
would stand up—the old amateur ! ” 

They went on to the Canalettos and Guardis Whistler could not — 
weary of—to Canaletto’s big red church and the tiny Rotunda at Vaux- — 
hall with the little figures, from which Hogarth learned so much. ~ 
Whistler always acknowledged Guardi’s influence, though it had not led — 
him in Venice to paint pictures like Guardi or Canaletto either. And he — 
never tired of pointing out that great artists like Guardi and Canaletto ~ 
and Velasquez, who were born and worked in the South, did not try to — 
paint sunlight, but kept their work grey and lowin tone. That day at ~ 
the National Gallery, before he could finish explaining the similarity — 
between his work and Guardi’s the talk came to an end, for half the . 
340 [1896 


THE 


AASTER SMITH OF LYME REGIS 
OIL 


In the Boston Museum of Fine Arts 


(See page 331) 


THE SMITH 
PASSAGE DU DRAGON 


LITHOGRAPH. W. 73 


(See page 326) 


ALONE 


copyists in the room had left their easels. He stopped. He could 
not talk to an audience which he was not sure was sympathetic. Sure 
of sympathy, he would talk for ever in praise of the luminosity of 
Claude, the certainty of Canaletto, the wonderful tone of Guardi, 
the character and colour of Hogarth. Another Italian about whom 
he was enthusiastic was Michael Angelo Caravaggio, admiring his things 
in the Louvre. Whistler maintained that the exact knowledge, the 
science, of the Old Masters was the reason of their greatness. The 
modern painter has a few tricks, a few fads ; these give out, and nothing 
is left. Knowledge is inexhaustible. Tintoretto did not find his way 
until he was forty. Titian was painting in as masterly a manner in 
his last year as in his youth. And speaking of the cleverness—a term he 
hated—of the modern man, he said: 

‘Think of the finish, the delicacy, the elegance, the repose of a 
little Terborgh, Vermeer, Metsu. These were masters who could 
paint interiors, chandeliers, and all the rest; and what a difference 
between them and the clever little interiors now!” 

In the autumn Whistler established Miss Birnie Philip and her 
mother in the Rue du Bac and returned to Mr. Heinemann’s flat at 
Whitehall Court, making it so much his home that before long he was 
laughingly alluding to “‘ my guest Heinemann.” It is not likely that 
the two would ever have parted had not Mr. Heinemann married, 
and even then Whistler stayed with him as long as his health remained 
good, dependent on the friendship formed late in life with a man 
many years younger. When Mr. Heinemann was away he complained 
that London was duller and blacker than ever. Whistler shrank from 
condolence in his great grief or from a revival of the memories of those 
terrible weeks. His host was careful, or we would invite Whistler to 
us if anybody was expected at Whitehall Court. After three or four 
years Mr. Heinemann’s married life ended abruptly, and Whistler at 
once suggested that they should go back to the old way. Mr. Heine- 
mann took another flat in Whitehall Court with this idea. But before 
the plan could be realised Whistler died. 

In the autumn of 1896 Mr. Henry Savage Landor, back from 
Japan and Korea, also stayed with Mr. Heinemann; “a rare fellow, 
full of real affection,” Whistler said of him. They sat up for hours 
together night after night. Whistler slept badly, and Mr. Landor 
1896] 341 


James McNeitt WHuisTLER 


can do with less sleep than most people. There was a skull in the 
drawing-room that Mr. Landor tells us Whistler sketched over and 
over again, while they talked till morning. When they drew the curtains 
it was day ; then Whistler dressed, breakfasted, and went to the studio. 
He brought us stories of Mr. Landor; the way in which he would 
start for the ends of the earth as if to stroll in Piccadilly, “‘ leaving the 
costume of travel to the Briton crossing the Channel”’; or, in light 
shoes, “ outwalk the stoutest-shod gillie over Scotch moors.” Then 
Whistler brought us Mr. Landor, with whom our friendship dates from 
the morning when, at Whistler’s request, he sat Japanese fashion on 
the floor in front of our fire, a rug wrapped round him for kimono, 
and devoured imaginary rice with pencils for chopsticks. When Mr. 
Landor had his horrible experiences in Thibet and the story of his 
tortures was telegraphed to Europe, Whistler was the first to send 
him a cable rejoicing at his escape. Whistler also took a fancy while 
in Whitehall Court to Mr. Heinemann’s brother, Edmund, who was, 
Whistler said, ‘‘ something in the City,”’ who saw to one or two invest- 
ments for him, and whom he christened the “ Napoleon of Finance ” 
and described as “sitting in a tangled web of telegraphs and telephones.” 
He never had invested money before, and it was with pride that he 
deposited at the bank his scrip and collected his dividends. To end 
a discussion about the City Mr. Edmund Heinemann once said to him, 
“You ain’t on the Stock Exchange!” ‘* Well,” said Whistler, “* you 
just thank your stars, Eddy, I ain’t, because if I was, there wouldn’t 
be much room for you! What!” 

Evening after evening he would linger in the studio until he could 
see no longer, keeping dinner waiting at Whitehall Court, so that no 
time could ever be fixed. Arriving, he would mix cocktails, an art 
in which he excelled and must have learned in the days when he stayed 
away from the Coast Survey. Ifit did not suit him to dine at Whitehall 
Court he would write or wire to say he could dine with us if we liked ; 
or that he had amazing things to tell us, should he come? or that he 
was sure we were both wanting to see him; or Heinemann’s servant, 
Payne, would announce his coming; or he would drive straight from 
the studio, reaching us sometimes before the notes he had sent, or with 
the wires unsent in his pocket ; almost the only time we have known 
him willingly not to dress for dinner. On rare occasions he came in 
342 [1896 


ALONE 


after we had dined, demanded the fortune du pot of our small establish- 
ment, and was content no matter howmeagre that fortune might prove, 
though if it included “a piece of American cake,” or anything sweet, 
he was better pleased. He grumbled only over our Sunday supper, 
which was cold in English fashion, out of deference to Bowen, our 
old English servant. Then he would bring Constant, his valet, model, 
and cook, to make an onion soup or an omelette. Constant was 
succeeded by a little Belgian called Marie, who was supposed to look 
after the studio, and who, when he stayed at Garlant’s and we dined 
with him there, would be summoned to dress the salad and make the 
coffee. It was not long after this that, by the doctor’s advice, he gave 
up coffee and stopped smoking too. Fewmen ever ate less than Whistler, 
but few were more fastidious about what they did eat. He made the 
best of our English cooking while it lasted, but he was glad when Bowen 
was replaced by Louise and then Augustine, who were French and who 
could make the soups, salads, and dishes he liked, and who did not 
hesitate to scold him when he was late and ruined the dinner. 
These meetings must have been pleasant to Whistler as to us; 
there were weeks when he came every evening. On his arrival he might 
be silent, but after his nap he would begin talking, and his talk was 
as good on the last evening with us as on the first. We shall always 
regret that we made no notes of what he said, though the charm of his 
talk would have eluded a shorthand reporter. Much can never be 
forgotten. In “surroundings of antagonism ” he wrapped this talk 
as well as himself in “‘ a species of misunderstanding ” and deliberately 
mystified, bewildered, and aggravated the company. But when dis- 
guise was not necessary, and he talked at his ease, he impressed everyone 
with his sanity of judgment, breadth of interest, and keenness of intel- 
lect. His reading was extensive, though we never ceased to wonder 
when he found time for it, save during sleepless nights. His talk 
abounded in quotations, especially from the Bible, that “ splendid mine 
of invective,” he described it. His diversity of knowledge was as unex- 

pected as his extensive reading, and we felt that he knew things intui- 
- tively, just as by some uncanny faculty he heard everything said about 
him. When he chose he held the floor and was then at his best. “‘ lam 
not arguing with you, I am telling you,”’ he would say, and he would lose 
his temper, which was violent as ever, but he was friendlier than before 
1896] 343 


James McNer1tt WHISTLER 


when it was over. He liked to hear the last gossip, and reproached us 
if we had none for him. More than once he told E. her discretion 
amounted positively to indiscretion ; he was sure she had a cupboard 
full of skeletons, and some day, when she was pulling the strings of one 
carefully to put it back in place, the whole lot would come rattling down 
about her ears. And so, the shadow of sorrow in the background, 
the evenings went by that winter in the little dining-room which had 
been Etty’s studio where the huge Edinburgh pictures were painted. 

The Eden affair was still dragging on, and Whistler was disgusted 
to find English artists as afraid to support him as at the Ruskin trial. 
One day in Bond Street he met a Follower, just returned to town, 
arm-on-arm with “the Baronet.” The Follower at once left a card 
at Fitzroy Street. Whistler wrote “ Judas Iscariot’ on it and sent 
it back to him. A few weeks later the New English Art Club hung 
Sir William Eden’s work, and with it, he said, “‘ their shame, upon 
their walls.” He complimented them, much to their discomfort, on 
their appetite for “ toad.” To clear the air, which had become sultry 
in the art clubs and studios, we invited Professor Fred Brown and Dr. 
D. S. MacColl to meet him one evening at dinner, and discuss things. 
Professor Brown had another engagement. Dr. MacColl came, and 
Whistler, who did not mind how hard a man fought if he fought at all, 
continued on terms with him. But the New English Art Club he 
never forgave. 

A show of J.’s lithographs of Granada and the Alhambra was 
arranged at the Fine Art Society’s during December 1896, and for the 
catalogue Whistler wrote an introductory note, and another for a show 
of Phil May’s drawings in the same gallery. He designed the cover 
for Mr. Charles Whibley’s Book of Scoundrels, and also two covers for 
novels by Miss Elizabeth Robins, Below the Salt, for which he drew 
a silver ship, and The Open Question, for which he devised shields ; 
all three books published by Mr. Heinemann. The design for the 
Book of Scoundrels was a gallows, drawn in thin lines, with rope and 
noose attached. Henley, to whom it was shown, asked whether the 
gallows should not have been drawn with a support. \ Whistler’s 
comment was: “ Well, you know, that’s the usual sort of gallows, but 
this one will do. It will hang all of us. Just like Henley’s selfishness 
to want a strong one! ” an allusion to Henley’s size. 


344 [1896 


PORTRATT OF MURS Awe 1a CAS SAIN 


(See pagey257) 


UNOTOI-MALVM 


dadddId LY MOCNIM dOHS 


ALONE 


During the winter Whistler met Sir Seymour Haden for the last 
time at a dinner given by the Society of Illustrators (of which both 
were Vice-Presidents) to Mr. Alfred Parsons, on his election to the 
Royal Academy. It was Whistler’s first appearance in public since 
his wife’s death, and as we had persuaded him to go, never antici- 
pating any such meeting, we were annoyed to think that we had exposed 
him to the unpleasantness of it, or Haden either, for we had had no 
part in their quarrels. However, as soon as Whistler saw Haden he 
woke up and began to enjoy himself. His laugh carried far. Haden 
heard it, and may have seen the three monocles on the dinner-table. 
He looked toward the laugh, dropped his spoon in his soup-plate, and 
left. Later Whistler was called upon to make a speech and could not 
get out of it. But it was an anti-climax. The event of the dinner 
was over. 

At Christmas he went with Mr. and Mrs. T. Fisher Unwin and 
ourselves to Bournemouth, where our hotel was an old-fashioned inn, 
selected from the guide-book because it was the nearest to the sea. We 
breakfasted in our rooms, we met at lunch to order dinner, and the rest 
of the day Whistler insisted must be spent getting an appetite for it— 
wandering on the cliffs, he with his little paint-box. But the sea was 
on the wrong side, the wind blew the wrong way, he could do nothing. 
Some days we took long drives. One damp, cold, cheerless afternoon 
we stopped at a small inn in Poole. The landlady, watching Whistler 
sip his hot whisky and water, was convinced he was somebody, but was 
unable to place him. ‘‘ And who do you suppose I am?” Whistler 
asked at last. ‘‘I can’t exactly say, sir, but I should fancy you was 
from the ’Alls!”? Aubrey Beardsley was then at Boscombe, a further 
stage in his brave fight with death, and we went to see him. But the 
sight of the suffering of others was too cruel a reminder to Whistler, 
and he shrank from going to Beardsley. 

Dinner was the event of the day, and it would have proved a disaster 
had Whistler not seen humour in being expected to eat it, so little 
was it what he thought a dinner should be. On Christmas Day he 
was melancholy and stared at the turkey and bread sauce, the sodden 
potatoes and soaked greens: ‘‘ To think of my beautiful room in the 
Rue du Bac, and the rest of them there, eating their Christmas dinner, 
having up my wonderful old Pouilly from my cellar.” 


1896] 345 


James McNertt WHIsTLER 


But we had something else to talk about. In the Saturday Review 
of that week, December 26, there was an article, signed Walter 
Sickert, that was of interest to us all. 


CHAPTER XL: THE LITHOGRAPH CASE. THE YEARS 
EIGHTEEN NINETY-SIX AND EIGHTEEN NINETY-SEVEN. 


Mr. SickErt’s article was ostensibly inspired by the show of J.’s 
lithographs of Granada at the Fine Art Society’s, which Whistler had 
introduced. Whistler understood it to be an attack upon himself, as 
well as upon J., whose lithographs alone it pretended to deal with. As 
a tule, Whistler’s lithographs were made on lithographic paper and 
transferred to the stone. The article argued that to pass off drawings 
made on paper as lithographs was as misleading to “ the purchaser on 
the vital point of commercial value” as to sell photogravures for 
etchings, which, when Sir Hubert Herkomer had done so, led to a 
protest from J. and Whistler, and also from Mr. Sickert, whose con- 
demnation had been strong. The article, therefore, was written 
either ignorantly or maliciously, for no such distinction in lithography 
has ever been made. Transfer-paper is as old as Senefelder, the in- 
ventor of lithography, who looked upon it as the most important part of 
his invention. The comment amounted to a charge of dishonesty, and 
an apology was demanded by J. The apology was refused by Mr. Frank 
Harris, editor of the Saturday Review, and consequently Messrs. Lewis 
and Lewis brought an action for libel against writer and editor. 

The action stood in J.’s name, and Whistler was the principal wit- 
ness. Inthe hope that the matter might be settled by an apology and 
without appeal to the law, Mr. Heinemann arranged a meeting between 
the editor of the Saturday Review and Whistler, but nothing came of it. 
People who knew nothing of lithography got involved in the case, and 
our friend Harold Frederic, for one, entangled himself with the enemy. 
Others were found to know a great deal whom we never suspected of 
knowing anything, and through Whistler we discovered that Mr. 
Alfred Gilbert started life as a lithographer, was indignant with the 
Saturday Review, and only too willing to offer his help tous. Meetings 
followed on Sunday evenings in the huge Maida Vale house where Mr. 
346 [1897 


Tue LirHocrapy CAsE 


Gilbert was trying to revive medieval relations between master and 
workman and live the life of a craftsman with pupils and assistants, 
a brave experiment which ended in failure. 

The case was fixed for April 1897, the most inconvenient time of 
the year for the artist who exhibits. Whistler was working on the 
portrait of Miss Kinsella, and he had promised three pictures to the 
Salon: Green and Violet, Rose and Gold, and a Nocturne. M. Helleu, 
who was in London, catalogued and measured them, reserving space on 
the wall. Only a few days were left before sending in and the work 
would never be done in time. Whistler was in despair. It was then, too, 
he learned that C. E. Holloway, a distinguished artist whom the world 
never knew, was ill in his studio near by. Holloway was anything but 
a successful man, and Whistler was shocked to find him in bed, lacking 
every comfort. He provided doctors, nurses, medicine, and food, 
and looked after the dying man’s family. He spent afternoons in 
Holloway’s tiny bedroom. All this took up time and made it difficult 
to get his pictures ready for the Salon. 

He called one morning on his way to the studio to tell us of the 
death of Holloway. He was going to the funeral, and suggested a fund 
to purchase some of the pictures and give the proceeds to the family. 
He was nervous and worried, the Salon clamouring for his work on the 
one hand, the trial claiming him on the other. People, he complained, 
did not seem to understand the importance of his time. Things were 
amazing in the studio, and he was expected to leave them just to go into 
court. No, he wouldn’t, that was the end of it. The pictures must 
be finished. J. said to him: ‘‘ The case is as much yours as mine, 
and you must come. Your reputation is involved. There will be 
an end to your lithography if we lose. You must fight.” 

Whistler liked one the better for the contradiction he was supposed 
unable to bear, and he answered: “ Well, you know, but really—why, 
of course, Joseph, it’s all right. I’m coming; of course, we’ll fight 
it through together. J never meant not to. That’s all right.” 

And to E., who went with him to the ‘‘ Temple of Pomona” in 
the Strand, to order flowers for Holloway, he kept saying: “ You 
know, really, Joseph mustn’t talk like that! Of course, it’s all right. 
Of course, I never meant not to come. You must tell him it’s all 
right. I never back out!” 


1897] 347 


James McNeiILu WHIsTLER 


His work stopped. His pictures did not go to Paris. He stood 
by us. 

The case was tried in the King’s Bench Division on April 5, before 
Mr. Justice Mathew. We were represented by Sir Edward Clarke, Q.C., 
and Mr. Eldon Bankes. Whistler arrived early. In the great hall he 
met the counsel for the other side, Mr. Bigham, an acquaintance, and, 
leaning on his arm, entered the court, “ capturing the enemy’s counsel 
on the way,” he said, as he sat down between us and Sir George Lewis. 
The counsel are now both judges. 

J., in the witness-box, pointed out that he had made lithographs 
both on paper and on stone ; that there was no difference between them, 
an historical fact which he was able to prove; that for the defendants 
to deny that a lithograph made on paper was as much a lithograph as a 
lithograph made on stone showed that they knew nothing about the 
subject, or else were acting out of malice. 

Whistler was called next. He said his grievance was the accusation 
that he pursued the same evil practice. He was asked by Mr. Bigham 
if he was very angry with Mr. Sickert, and he replied he might not be 
angry with Mr. Sickert, but he was disgusted that “‘ distinguished people 
like Mr. Pennell and myself are attacked by an absolutely unknown 
authority (Mr. Sickert), an insignificant and irresponsible person.” 

“Then,” said Mr. Bigham, ‘‘ Mr. Sickert is an insignificant and 
irresponsible person who can do no harm ? ” 

Whistler answered: “ Even a fool can do harm, and if any harm is 
done to Mr. Pennell it is done tome. This is a question for all artists.” 
And he added that Mr. Sickert’s “ pretended compliments and 
flatteries were a most impertinent piece of insolence, tainted with a 
certain obsequious approach.” 

Further asked if this was his action, he said: “I am afraid if 
Mr. Pennell had not taken these proceedings, I should.” 

“You are working together then ? ” 

“‘ No, we are on the same side.” 

“‘ Are you bearing any part of the costs ?” 

“No, but I am quite willing.” 

Sir Edward Clarke then interposed and asked if there was any 
foundation for that question. 

“‘ Only the lightness and delicacy of the counsel’s suggestion.” 

348 [1897 


Tae thi 
ET 
. 


THE THAMES 


125 


Wee 


LITHOTINT, 


(See page 333) 


FIRELIGHT. JOSEPH "PENNELL SN Orel : 
LITHOGRAPH. W, 104 


By permission of T, Fisher Unwin, Esq. 


ee 


(See page 333) 


Tue Lirnocrary CAsE 


At the end of the cross-examination Whistler adjusted his eye-glass, 
put his hat on the rail of the witness-box, slowly pulled off one glove 
after the other. He turned to the judge and said: 

*¢ And now, my Lord, may I tell you why we are all here ? ” 

‘No, Mr. Whistler,” said his Lordship; ‘‘ we are all here because 
we cannot help it.” 

Whistler left the box. What he meant to say no one will ever know. 
We asked him later. He shook his head. The moment for saying it 
had passed. 

Sir Sidney Colvin, Keeper of the Print Room of the British 
Museum; Mr. Strange, of the Art Library, South Kensington ; 
Mr. Way and Mr. Goulding, professional lithographic printers; and 
Mr. Alfred Gilbert were our witnesses. 

Mr. Bigham said that the case was a storm in a teacup blown up by 
Whistler, and that the article could do no harm to anybody. 

Mr. Sickert protested that he was familiar with all the processes 
of lithography ; that the plaintiff’s lithographs were not lithographs, 
but, as a matter of fact, mere transfers. He had submitted the article 
to another paper, which refused it before it was accepted by the Saturday 
Review. He had been under the impression that the plaintiff would 
like a newspaper correspondence. He was actuated by a pedantic 
purism. Cross-examined by Sir Edward Clarke, he had to admit by 
implication that he intended to charge the plaintiff with dishonest 
practices, and that he had caught Mr. Pennell, the purist, tripping. He 
had to admit that the only lithograph he ever published was made in the 
same way, and he had called it, or allowed it to be called, a lithograph. 

Mr. Sickert’s witnesses scarcely helped him. Mr. C. H. Shannon’s 
testimony was more favourable to us than to him. Mr. Rothenstein 
testified that all the lithographs he had published were done exactly 
as Whistler and J. had done theirs, and as he came out of the box fell into 
his hat. Mr. George Moore solemnly proclaimed that he knew nothing 
about lithographs, but that he knew Degas. ‘ What’s Degas?” 
roared the judge, thinking some new process was being sprung on him, 
and Mr. Moore vanished. The editor of the Saturday Review acknow- 
ledged that he had published an illustrated supplement full of litho- 
graphs done on transfer-paper and advertised by him as lithographs ; 
that he had not known what was in Mr. Sickert’s article until it appeared 
1897] 349 


James McNertt WHIsTLER 


The judge, in summing up, said that a critic might express a most 
disparaging opinion on an artist’s work and might refer to him in the 
most disagreeable terms, but he must not attribute to the artist dis- 
creditable conduct, unless he could prove that his charge was true. 
If the jury thought the criticism merely sharp and exaggerated, they 
would find a verdict for the defendant, but if not—that is, if it was more 
than this—they should consider to what damages the plaintiff was 
entitled. The verdict was for the plaintiffi—damages fifty pounds, not 
a high estimate of the value of artistic morality on the part of the British 
jury, but at least, in so far as it carried costs, higher than the estimate 
put upon Whistler’s work in the Ruskin trial. 

So convinced were the other side of a verdict in their favour that 
a rumour reached us of a luncheon ordered beforehand at the Savoy, 
on the second day, by the editor of the Saturday Review to celebrate 
our defeat. We waited to be sure. Then we carried off Whistler, 
Mr. Reginald Poole, who had conducted the case for us, and Mr. 
Jonathan Sturges to the Café Royal for our breakfast. Whistler was 
jubilant, and nothing pleased him more than the deference of the 
foreman of the jury, who waylaid him to shake hands at the close of the 
trial. And since then no incautious British artists or critics have dared 
to tamper with Senefelder’s definition of lithography. 


CHAPTER XLI: THE END OF THE EDEN CASE, THE YEARS 
EIGHTEEN NINETY-SEVEN TO EIGHTEEN NINETY-NINE. 


AFTER our triumph Whistler went to Paris and Boldini painted his 
portrait, shown in the International Exhibition of 1900. It was done 
in a very few sittings. Mr. Kennedy, who went with Whistler, says 
that Boldini worked rapidly, that Whistler got tired of doing what he 
had made other people do all his life—pose—and took naps. During 
one of these Boldini made a dry-point on a zinc plate. Whistler did not 
like it, nor did he like any better Helleu’s done at the same time. Of 
the painting Whistler said to us, ‘ They say that looks like me, but I 
hope I don’t look like that!” It is, however, a presentment of him 
in his worst mood, and Mr. Kennedy remembers that he was in his worst 
mood all the while. It is the Whistler whom the world knew and feared. 
350 [1897 


THE Enp oF THE Epen Case 


When Whistler came back to London, in May or June, he went to 
Garlant’s Hotel, where Kennedy was staying. Mr. Kennedy’s relations 
with Whistler commenced by his selling Whistler’s prints and pictures 
in New York, and then developed into an intimate friendship, which 
continued until almost the end of Whistler’s life. Kennedy was one 
of Whistler’s champions in America, devoted and loyal, though the 
friendship ended rather abruptly through a regrettable misunderstand- 
ing. After Whistler’s death, Kennedy was mainly responsible for the 
Grolier Club exhibition and catalogue. 

This summer Whistler went to Hampton, where Mr. Heinemann 
had taken a cottage. Whistler never liked the country, but, he said, 
“‘ T suppose now we’ll have to fish for the little gudgeon together from 
a chair, with painted corks, like the other Britons.” 

He took part in the fun.. He went to regattas, picnicked, and was 
rowed and punted about. At Hampton he met Mr, William Nicholson, 
whom Mr. Heinemann had asked down with the idea of his adding 
a portrait of Whistler to the series that began with his woodcut of 
Queen Victoria in the ‘New Review. Later Mr. Nicholson, in the 
Fitzroy Street studio, made a study of Whistler in evening dress, 
recalling the Sarasate, and it appeared in the Review. 

It was the summer of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. Whistler 
could not come to us from Garlant’s without passing through streets 
hung with tawdry wreaths and draggled festoons; Trafalgar Square 
buried in platforms, seats, and advertisements, Nelson on his column 
peering above. The decorations were an unfailing amusement to 
him, an excuse for an estimate of “‘ the Island and the Islander,” and 
the talk about the British, an annoyance, we are afraid, to some of his 
friends and more of his enemies. One evening he sketched for us his 
impression of the Square, with Nelson “ boarded at last.” ‘“ You 

ee,” he said, ‘‘ England expects every Englishman to be ridiculous,” 
and the sketch appeared in the Daily Chronicle. 

He again went to the Naval Review, and this time saw it from Mr. 
George Vanderbilt’s yacht. No etchings were made, though we 
believe he did a water-colour or pastel. Instead, he wrote some of 
his saddest letters, yet he said with a gleam of glee: “ It was wonderful, 
just like Spain, just like Velasquez at some great function, for there 
was Philip,” whom Mr. Vanderbilt resembled, as the portrait proved 
1897] 351 


James McNett WHISTLER 


till he changed and ruined it. ‘‘ There was the Queen, Mrs. 
Vanderbilt ; there was I, the Court Painter, and, why, even the 
dwarfs,” as he described appropriately two well-known Americans on 
board. 

In July we proposed to cycle across France to Switzerland, and the 
night before we started Whistler, M. Boldini, and Mr. Kennedy dined 
with us to say good-bye. Boldini was leaving London the next day, 
and by the end of the evening Whistler made up his mind to come as 
far as Dieppe, and as he would never, if he could help it, go alone, he 
decided that Mr. Kennedy must come too. Next morning we all 
arrived at the station save Whistler. Even his baggage came, but not 
till we were reduced almost to nervous collapse, not till the train was 
starting, did he saunter unmoved—his straw hat over his eyes—down 
the platform, followed humbly by the pompous station-master and 
amazed porters, looking for our carriage. No sooner had we started 
than he was in the best of spirits and enjoyed every minute of the 
journey, most when on the boat he found a camp of enemies also on 
the way to Dieppe, to his delight and their discomfort. At Dieppe 
we had to get our bicycles through the customs, the others took a cab, 
and when we reached the hotel we were received regally and given a 
whole suite, Boldini having hinted to the patron we were royalty 
travelling incognito, they in attendance. Almost at once Whistler 
got out his little colour-box and started for a shop front in a narrow 
street he knew. But first he had to find another kind of shop where he 
could buy a rosette of the Legion of Honour, for his had been lost’ or 
forgotten, and he would have thought it wanting in respect to appear 
without it in France. The shopkeeper, to whom he explained, said, 
“ All right, monsteur, here is the rosette, but I have heard that story 
before.” Whistler was furious, but in the end had to laugh. His 
dread of illness was again shown, for Beardsley, dying, was in the town, 
and without knowing it we passed his window and Beardsley saw us. 
When afterwards we called, Whistler refused to come, and it was well 
he did. Beardsley, however, was not the only mS in Dieppe 
Whistler would not meet. 

We had only our cycling costumes, we were staying at the Hotel 
Royal. When he came down to dinner, very late of course, he was 
correct in evening dress, the rosette in place, and we thought there 


352 [1897 — 


WN a a ~ al = 


THe Enp oF THE EDEN CASE 


was a suggestion of hesitation, but it was only a suggestion. He gave 
his arm to E., who was in short cycling skirt, J. in knickerbockers, and 
as we went into the dining-room he turned to her, and, to a question 
that had never been asked, answered clearly, ‘‘ Mais out, Princesse,” 
and after that he had all the attention he wanted. Every tourist 
stared, and we were escorted to our seats by the patron, and for the 
rest of the evening, when he was not talking to the Princesse, he was 
giving good advice to the head waiter. The evening and the night 
were diversified periodically by Boldini’s practical jokes, which did not 
keep Whistler from being down early in the morning to see us off. 
“ Well, you know, can’t I hold something ? ” he offered, as E. mounted 
her bicycle, and as he watched us wheel along the sea-front, he told 
Mr. Kennedy, “‘ After all, O’K., . . . there’s something in it!” We 
asked Mr. Kennedy to pay our bill, and M. Boldini had some trouble 
with his. The result was that when Whistler and Kennedy counted 
up their joint funds, they found they had just about enough money 
to get back to London, and they left. 

In the autumn Whistler was in Paris, the Eden case in the Cour de 
Cassation being fixed for November 17. It was heard before Président 
Périvier, Maitre Beurdeley for the second time defending Whistler. 
Mr. Heinemann came from London, and was with him in court. 
Judgment was given on December 2. The affair had been talked about, 
and the court was crowded. The judgment went as entirely in Whistler’s 
favour as, in the Lower Court, it had gone against him. He was to 
keep the picture, on condition that he made it unrecognisable as a 
portrait of Lady Eden, which had been done; Sir William Eden was 
to have the hundred guineas back, which already had been returned 
and § per cent. interest ; Whistler was to pay one thousand francs 
damages with interest and the cost of the first trial, and “‘ the Baronet ” 
to pay the costs of appeal. Mr. MacMonnies, who also was with 
Whistler in court, remembers that “it was decided by the judges that 
the picture should be produced when needed. Mr. Whistler whispered 
in my ear, ‘ MacMonnies, take the picture and get out with it.’ As 
we sat under the judges’ noses, and the court-room was packed with 
admirers and enemies and court officials, I made a distinct spot as I 
walked down the aisle with the picture under my arm. And Whistler 
showed his admirable generalship in the case, as not one of the gendarmes 
1897] Z 353 


James McNeritt WHISTLER 


could stop me. So all anybody could do was to watch it disappear 
out of the door.” 

Whistler said to us that the Procureur de la République was splendid ; 
that the whole affair was a public recognition of his position; that the 
trial made history, established a precedent, proving the right of the 
artist to his own work; that a new clause had been added to the Code 
Napoléon ; that he had “ wiped up the floor ” with “ the Baronet ” be- 
fore all Paris, his intention from the first. He wished it to be known 
that in the law of France he would go down with Napoleon : 

‘Well, you know, take my word for it, Joseph, the first duty of a 
good general when he has won his battle is to say so, otherwise the 
people, always dull—the Briton especially—tfail to understand, and it is 
an unsettled point in history for ever. Victory is not complete until 
the wounded are looked after and the dead counted.” 

The trial over, he wanted immediately to make a beautiful little 
book of it, and he began to arrange the report with his “ Reflections ” 
for publication. During many months proofs of The Baronet and the 
Butterfly filled his pockets. As he had read pages of The Ten O'Clock 
to Mr. Alan S. Cole, so he read pages of The Baronet and the Butterfly 
to us, and sometimes to the Council of the International after the 
meetings, a mistake, for there were members who had not the intelli- 
gence to understand it or him. His care was no less than with The 
Gentle Art. Every note, every Butterfly, was thought out and placed — 
properly. “ Beautiful, you know. Isn’t it beautiful ? ” he would say, 
when a page or a paragraph pleased him, and nothing pleased him more 
than the Butterfly following the “ Reflection ” on page 43. There he 
quotes George Moore: “I undertook a journey to Paris in the depth of © 
winter, had two shocking passages across the Channel and spent twenty-_ 
jive pounds. All this worry is the commission I received for my trouble 
in the matter.” | 

Whistler’s ‘* Reflection”? was: ‘‘ Why, damme, sir! he must have ~ 
had a Valentine himself—the sea-saddened expert.” This was followed — 
by the Butterfly, ‘ splendid—actually rolling back with laughter, you~ 
know ! ” | 

A new feature was the toad printed over the Dedication: “ To 
those confréres across the Channel who, refraining from intrusive 
demonstration, with a pluck and delicacy all their own ‘sat tight’ 


354 [1897 


Tue Enp or THE EpEN CasE 


during the struggle, these decrees of the judges are affectionately 
dedicated.” 

Below, a Butterfly bows and sends its sting to England. The tiny 
toad is the only realistic drawing in his books, and to make it realistic 
he needed a model. He thought of applying at the Zoological Gardens, 
was promised one by Mr. Wimbush, a painter in the same house, and 
finally his step-son, Mr. E. Godwin, found one. He put the toad in a 
paper box, forgot all about it, and was shocked when he heard it was 
dead. 

‘You know, they say I starved it. Well, it must have caught a 
fly or two, and I thought toads lived in stone or amber—or something— 
for hundreds of years—don’t you know the stories? Perhaps it was 
because I hadn’t the amber!” 

The Baronet and the Butterfly was published in Paris by Henry May, 
May 13, 1899. Whistler objected to the date, but on the 13th it 
appeared, and the result justified his superstition. It did not attract 
much attention. When we saw him in Paris that month he seemed to 
think the fault was with the critics who were keeping up the played-out 
business of ‘‘ misunderstanding and misrepresentation.” But the 
interest in the Eden trial had never been as great as he fancied, and 
the report is dull reading, because there were no witnesses and so no 
cross-examination which would in England have given him the op- 
portunity of “scalping ” his victim. The Ruskin trial in The Gentle 
Art is full of Whistler’s answers in court ; The Baronet and the Butterfly 
is made up of the speeches of advocates and judges. In the marginal 
notes, the Dedication, the Argument, he is brilliant and witty, and 
the Butterfly as gay as ever. There is no Whistler in the speeches, that 
is the trouble. 

The book was one of many schemes that occupied him during these 
years. The International Society of Sculptors, Painters, and Gravers 
was organised, and the Atelier Carmen in Paris was planned, both so 
important that their history is reserved for other chapters. A venture 
from which he hoped great things was his endeavour to dispense with 
the middleman in art. Hitherto he had been glad to trust his affairs to 
dealers. ‘I will lay the golden eggs, you will supply the incubator,” 
he told one, whose version of the arrangement was that when the incu- 
bator was ready Whistler would not give up the golden eggs. He could 
1899] 355 


James McNett WHIsTLER 


not reconcile himself to the large sums gained by buying and selling © 


his work since 1892. Over the sale of old work he had no control; the 


sale of new he determined to keep in his hands. He would be his own — 
agent, set up his own shop, form a trust in Whistlers. We think it — 


was in 1896 he first spoke to us about it, delighted, sure he was to 
succeed financially at last. In 1897 rumours were spread of a “‘ Whistler 
Syndicate.” In 1898 advertisements of the “‘ Company of the Butter- 


fly ” appeared in the Atheneum—the Company composed, as far as we ~ 


knew, of James McNeill Whistler. Two rooms were taken on the first 
floor at No. 2 Hinde Street, Manchester Square, close to the Wallace 
Gallery. They were charming. A few prints were hung. A picture or 
_ two stood on easels. To go to Whistler in the studio for his work was 
one thing ; it was quite another to go to a shop run by no one knew 


who, half the time shut, and deserted when open. We doubt if — 


anything was ever sold there, we never saw a visitor in the place. Soon — 


the rooms were turned over to Mr. Heinemann for a show of Mr. 


Nicholson’s colour-prints, and after that no more was heard of the © 


** Company of the Butterfly.” 


There was another reason for starting it. So many people came to — 
the studio for so many reasons that he had to keep them out, and his ~ 
idea was that those who wanted to buy pictures should go to the “‘ Com- 


pany of the Butterfly,” and buy them there without interrupting him. 


But no shop could dispose of the constant visits from the curious, from — 


photographers asking for his portrait, journalists begging for an inter- 
view, literary people anxious to make articles or books about him. They 
would write to arrange a certain hour and appear without waiting for 
a reply. One, who had written to say he was coming with a letter of 
introduction, on his arrival found the door fastened and heard Whistler 
whistling inside, and that was all the indignant visitor heard or saw of 
him. There is a story of an American collector who, calling one day 
when not wanted, and after wasting much time, asked : 

“* How much for the whole lot, Mr. Whistler ? ” 

“ Five millions.” 

6¢ What ? 99 

““ My posthumous prices!” 

And there are stories of Whistler’s ways of meeting the hordes who 
tried to force themselves into the studio. Mr. Eddy tells one: 


356 


rt 
— 
(o'e) 
ve) 
a 
ie) 
ve) 


Pare AS att? 


See Liat e eee ee ee a ee 


~ 
=e 


STUDY IN BROWN 


OIL 


In the possession of the Baroness de Meyer 


(See page 359) 


ee 


STUDY “OF DHE NUDE 


PEN DRAWING 


In the possession of William Heinemann, Esq. 


(See page 360) 


BETWEEN Lonpon AND Paris 


“ An acquaintance had brought, without invitation, a friend, ‘ a dis- 
tinguished and clever woman,’ to the studio in the Rue Notre-Dame- 
des-Champs. They reached the door, both out of breath from their 
long climb. ‘Ah, my dear Whistler,’ drawled € , ‘I have taken 
the liberty of bringing Lady D to see you. I knew you would be 
delighted.’ ‘ Delighted, ’'m sure! Quite beyond expression, but ’— 
mysteriously, and holding the door so as to bar their entrance— 
‘my dear Lady D , I would never forgive our friend for bringing 
you up six flights of stairs on so hot a day to visit a studio at one of 
these—eh—pagan moments when ’—and he glanced furtively behind 
him, and still further closed the door—‘ it is absolutely impossible for 
a lady to be received. Upon my soul, I should never forgive him.’ 
And Whistler bowed them down from the top of the six flights and 
returned to the portrait of a very sedate old gentleman who had taken 
advantage of the interruption to break for a moment the rigour of his 
pose.” 

The ‘‘ Company of the Butterfly ” never relieved him of the visitors 
who were more eager to see him than his work. But this he did not 
discover until he had devoted to the venture far more time than he 
had to spare during the crowded years of its existence. 


CHAPTER XLII: BETWEEN LONDON AND PARIS. THE 
YEARS EIGHTEEN NINETY-SEVEN TO NINETEEN 
HUNDRED. 


AFTER his marriage Whistler was unfortunate in his choice of apart- 
ments and studios. The Studio in the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, 
on the sixth floor, was the worst for a man with a weak heart to climb 
to; the apartment in the Rue du Bac, low and damp, was as bad for 
a man who caught cold easily. He was constantly ill during the winter 
of 1897-98, which he passed mostly in Paris. Influenza kept him in 
bed in November, from January to March he was dull and listless as 
never before, save in Venice after the scirocco ; he said, “‘ I am so tired— 
I who am never tired ! ” 

Whistler’s heart, always weak, began to trouble him. He had been 
ill before, but, nervous as he was about his health, he never realised his 
1897] 357 


\ 


James McNeitut WuisTLER 


condition. We have known him, when too ill to work, get up out of 
bed in order to accomplish something important. A few years before, 
confined with quinsy to his brother’s house, forced to write what he 
wished to say on a slate, when someone he did not want to see was 
announced, he forgot that he could not talk and yelled, “‘ Send him 
away!” We have known, too, an invitation to dinner from a certain 
rich American to rout him out of bed and to cure him temporarily. 
It was this endeavour never to be ill, never to give in, that was one 
of the causes of his final breakdown. [Illness suggested death, and no 


man ever shrank more from the thought or mention of death than ~ 


Whistler. There was in life so much for him to do, so little time in 
which to do it. He would tell his brother it was useless for doctors 


to know so much if they had not discovered the elixir of life. “Why — 
not try to find it?’ he asked the Doctor. ‘‘ Isn’t it in the heart of the © 


unknown? It must be there.” 
In the studio he worked harder than ever. Illness made him foresee 
that his time was short, and he was goaded by the thought of the things 


to finish. When he was in London we were distressed by his fatigue. 
at the end of the day, but he said he was like the old cart-horse that _ 


could keep going as long as it was in traces, but must drop the minute — 
it was free. While he was in Paris, his letters were full of the “‘ amazing 


things” going on in the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. He said: — 


“‘ Really, you know, I could almost laugh at the extraordinary pro- 
gress | am making, and the lovely things I am inventing—work be- 
yond anything I have ever done before.” 

He was only beginning to know and to understand, he told us. 
All that had gone before was experimental. 


There were new portraits. In 1897 he had begun one of Mr. 3 
George Vanderbilt—“ The Modern Philip ”—a full-length in riding — 


habit, whip in hand, standing against a dark background. The canvas 


was sent from Paris to London, just as Whistler and Vanderbilt hap- 
pened to bein one place or the other. Notone of his portraits of men in- — 
terested Whistler so much; certainly not one was finer when we first _ 
saw it in London, but it was a wreck in the Paris Memorial Exhibition of 


1905. Like others of this period, it had been worked over. He painted 


Mrs. Vanderbilt, Ivory and Gold, shown in the Salon of 1902, one of the © 
first of the several ovals he was now doing. Carmen, his model, sat. — 
358 [1807 


e 
* 


Between Lonpon AND Paris 


Portraits started a year or so later were of his brother-in-law, Mr. Birnie 
Philip, and of Mr. Elwell, an American painter whom he had known 
for some time. In May 1898, in the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, 
he showed us the full-length of himself in long overcoat, called Gold and 
Brown in the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1900 and, as we have said, 
never seen afterward. We own a pen-drawing he made of it. It was 
far from successful, and before he finished it Miss Marian Draughn, an 
American, began to pose for him—his “ Coon Girl ”’ he called her. She 
was sent to him by Gibson and Phil May. 

He painted many children. He loved children. Ernest G. Brown 
remembered Whistler’s thoughtfulness and consideration when his 
daughter sat for Pretty Nelly Brown, one of the most beautiful of the 
series. We have the same story from Mr. Croal Thomson, of whose 
daughter, Little Evelyn, Whistler made a lithograph. When he went 
to her father’s house at Highgate, Evelyn would run to meet him with 
outstretched hands, her face lifted to be kissed, and while he worked 
the other children would come and look on. Mr. Alan S. Cole has told 
us that once Whistler found his three little daughters decorating the 
drawing-room and hanging up a big welcome in flowers for their mother, 
who was to return. He forgot what he had come for and helped, as 
eager and excited as they, and stayed until Mrs. Cole arrived. He was 
walking from the Paris studio one day with Mrs. Clifford Addams and 
saw some children playing; he made her stop, “‘ I must look at the 
babbies,”’ he said, “ you know, I love the babbies!” Later, during 
his last illness, he liked to have Mrs. Addams’ own little girl, Diane, in 
the studio. And there are portraits of Brandon Thomas’ baby and 
Master Stephen Manuel that show his pleasure in painting his small 
sitters. The children of the street adored him ; the children of Chelsea 
and Fitzroy Street, who were used to artists, knew him well. There was 
one he was for ever telling us about, of five or six, who frightened while 
she fascinated him. “I likes whusky,” she confided one day when she 
was posing, “ and I likes Scoatch best !”’ She described her Christmas 
at home: “ Father ’e was drunk, mother was drunk, sister was drunk, 
I was drunk, and we made the cat drunk, too!” A still younger child 
gave him sittings, a baby of not more than three, the model for many 
of the pastels. She and her mother were resting one afternoon, Whistler 
watching her every movement. “ Really,” he said, “‘ you are a beauti- 
1898] 359 


James McNeitt WHIsTLER 


ful little thing!” She looked up at him, “‘ Yes, I is, Whistler,” she 
lisped. And there is the old story: ‘‘ Where did you come from, Mr. 
Whistler ?”? “I came from on high, my dear.” ‘“ H’m, never should 
have thought it,” said the child; ‘* shows how we can deceive ourselves.” 
But his popularity with children did not help him one Sunday afternoon, 
the only time it is possible to sketch with comfort in the City, when he 
went with J. to make a study of Clerkenwell Church tower, which was 
about to be restored. They drove to the church, but the light was bad 
and the colour not right, so they wandered off to Cloth Fair—until a 
little while ago the most perfect, really the only, bit of old London. 
Though Whistler had worked there many times, this afternoon the 
children did not approve of him. After a short encounter in which 
they, as always, got the better, Whistler and J. retired to another cab, 
followed by any refuse that came handy. But the children he painted, 
The Little Rose of Lyme Regis, The Little Lady Sophie of Soho, Lillie 
in our Alley, the small Italian waifs and strays, were his friends, and no 
painter ever gave the grace and feeling of childhood, or of girlhood as 
in Miss Woakes, more sympathetically. 

He was as absorbed in a series of nudes. Few of his paintings to- 
wards the end satisfied him so entirely as the small Phryne the Superb, 
Builder of Temples, which he sent to the International in 1901 and to the 
Salon in 1902. The first time he showed it to us he asked : 

“Would she be more superb—more truly the builder of Temples— 
had I painted her what is called life-size by the foolish critics who bring 
out their foot-rule ? Is it a question of feet and inches when you look 
at her?” 

He intended to paint an Eve, an Odalisque, a Bathsheba, and a 
Danaé, the designs to be enlarged on canvas by his apprentices, Mr. and 
Mrs. Clifford Addams, but this was never done. Suggestions were in the 
pastels of figures, for which he found the perfect model in London. 
When not in the studio, he kept sketching her from memory, and he was 
in despair when she married and went to some remote colony, but 
before she went he gave her some beautiful silver. These pastels 
are many and perfect. They are drawings on brown paper—studies 
or impressions of the model in infinite poses. In some she stands 
with her filmy draperies floating about her or falling in long, straight 
folds to her feet ; in others she lies upon a couch, indolent and lovely ; 
360 [1898 


BLUE AND CORAL 
THE LITTLE BLUE BONNET 


OIL 


Formerly in the possession of Wm, Heinemann, Esq. 


(See page 361) 


(See page 362) 


ROSE AND GOLD 
LITTLE LADY SOPHIE ORsSOre@ 


OIL 


In the Charles L. Freer Collecticn, National Gallery of American Art 


BETWEEN LONDON AND Paris 


she dances across the paper, she bends over a great bowl, she sits 
with her slim legs crossed and a cup of tea in her hand, she holds a 
fan or a flower ; but whatever she may be doing or however she may 
rest, she is but another expression of the beauty that haunted Whistler, 
the beauty that was the inspiration of the Harmonies in White and the 
Six Projects. Many poses are suggested in lithographs, etchings, and 
water-colours ; none show greater tenderness than when she returned 
with her child. He put his own tenderness into the encircling hands 
of the mother holding the baby on her knee, he found the most rhythmic 
lines when, standing, she balanced herself to clasp the child the 
more closely to her. Nothing could be slighter than the means by 
which the effect is produced, the figures drawn in black upon the 
brown paper, the colour—blue, or rose, or violet—suggested in the 
gauzy draperies or the cap or handkerchief knotted about the curls. 
But they have the exquisiteness of Tanagra figures and are as com- 
plete. ! 

All this work was done with feverish concern about mediums and 
materials and methods. He usually sat now as he worked, and he 
wore spectacles, sometimes two pairs, one over the other. He was 
never so thoughtful in the preparation of his colours and his canvas. 
At last the knowledge was coming to him, he said again and again. 
And he was never more successful in obtaining the unity and harmony 
he had always sought, in hiding the labour by which it was obtained 
and in giving to his painting the beauty of surface he prized so highly. 
Because in painting he tried to carry on the same subject, the same 
tradition, superficial critics accused him of repeating himself, or mistook 
his later for earlier works, like the critic of the Times who, in writing of 
his pictures at the International Society’s Exhibition of 1898, referred 
to “‘old works . . . among which The Little Blue Bonnet is the least 
known,” a remark Whistler printed in the édition de luxe of the cata- 
logue, with the explanation that the painting had come “ fresh from the 
easel to its first exhibition,” and that therefore “‘ the ‘plain man’ is, 
once more, prefoundly right, and we see again the advantage of memory 
over mere artistic instinct in the critic.” The small portraits and marines 
of the nineties are as fine as anything he ever did. The fact that for all 
these pictures he used frames of the same size and the same design 
helped—unintentionally on his part—to confuse critics accustomed 
1898] 361 


James McNeitt WHuIsTLER 


to the flamboyant vulgarity, utter inappropriateness, and complete 
indifference to scale in the frames of most painters. But then there 
are not half a dozen painters in a generation who have the faintest 
idea of decoration. Whistler, Puvis de Chavannes, and John La Farge 
are almost the only decorators whose names may be mentioned among 
moderns. Though some of Whistler’s portraits are more elabo- 
rate, not one is more powerful or more masterly as a study of 
character, and therefore more individual, than The Master Smith 
of Lyme Regis. When it is contrasted with The Little Rose, the 
embodiment of simple, sweet, healthy childhood, and The Little Lady 
Sophie of Soho and Lillie in our Alley, the sickly atmosphere of the slums 
reflected in their strange beauty, and these again with the exuberant 
colour and life of Carmen, there can be no question of the variety in 
Whistler’s later work, though a certain manner, that might have grown 
into mannerism, became more marked. There was a similarity in the 
general design. Most were heads and half-lengths, and, except in the 
finest, nose, eyes, and mouth were alike in character, and hands were 
badly drawn and clumsily put in. The colour was beautiful and he 
exulted init, but at the very last he must have known as well as anybody 
that his power of work was leaving him. 

Whistler spent the summer of 1898 chiefly in London, going first 
to Mr. Heinemann’s at Whitehall Court, then to Garlant’s Hotel. The 
delightful evenings of the year before began again for us, and there was 
a fresh interest for him in the war between the United States and Spain. 
“Tt was a wonderful and beautiful war,” he thought, “ the Spaniards 
were gentlemen,” and his pockets were filled with newspaper clippings 
to prove it. If we pointed out a blunder on the part of our soldiers, if 
we gave chance a share in our victories, he was furious : 

“Why say if any but Spaniards had been at the top of San Juan, 
we never would have got there ? Why question the zf? The facts are 
all that count. No fight could be more beautifully managed. I am 
telling you! I, a West Point man, know. What if Cervera did get 
whipped ? What if he was pulled up from the sea looking like a wad 
of cotton that had been soaked in anink-bottle ? What of it? Didn’t 
the whole United States Navy, headed by the admirals, receive him 
as the Commander of the Spanish Fleet should be received ? ” 

He was going out more and seeing more people. But his interest 
362 [1898 


BETWEEN LoNDON AND Paris 


in society was less, and evidently he preferred the quiet of the evenings 
with us. Chance encounters in our flat were often an entertainment. 
One we recall most vividly was with Frederick Sandys, whom he had not 
met for thirty years. Sandys was with us in the late afternoon when 
Whistler knocked his exaggerated postman’s knock that could not be 
mistaken, followed by the resounding peal of the bell. They gave each 
only a chilly recognition and sat down. Sandys was agitated, but there 
was no escape. Whistler looked like Boldini’s portrait, but soon they 
began to talk, and they talked till the early hours of the morning as if they 
were back at Rossetti’s, Sandys in the white waistcoat with gold buttons, 
but bent with age, Whistler straight and erect, but wrinkled and grey. 

He returned to Paris late in the autumn, settling there for the 
winter. Except for his attacks of illness, there was but one interruption 
to his work. Mr. Heinemann was married at Porto d’Anzio in February 
1899, and Whistler went to Italy as best man. This was his only visit 
to Rome. He was disappointed. To us he described the city as “a 
bit of an old ruin alongside of a railway station where I saw Mrs. Potter 
Palmer.”” And he added : 

‘“* Rome was awful—a hard sky all the time, a glaring sun and a 
strong wind. After I left the railway station, there were big buildings 
more like Whiteley’s than anything I expected in the Eternal City. St. 
Peter’s was fine, with its great yellow walls, the interior too big, perhaps, 
but you had only got to go inside to know where Wren got his ideas— 
how he, well, you know, robbed Peter’s to build Paul’s! And I liked 
the Vatican, the Swiss Guards, great big fellows, lolling about, as in 
Dumas ; they made you think of D’Artagnan, Aramis, and the others. 
And Michael Angelo? A tremendous fellow, yes; the frescoes in the 
Sistine Chapel, interesting as pictures, but with all the legs and arms 
of the figures sprawling everywhere, I could not see the decoration. 
There can be no decoration without repose ; a tremendous fellow, but 
not so much in the David and other things I was shown in Rome and 
Florence as in that one unfinished picture at the National Gallery. 
There is often elegance in the loggie of Raphael, but the big frescoes 
of the stanze did not interest me.” 

Velasquez’s portrait of Innocent X. in the Doria Palace he, ap- 
parently, did not see. 

During the journey to Porto d’Anzio, Princess , one of the 
1899] 363 


James McNeiLtut WuisTLER 


wedding guests, who heard vaguely that Whistler was an artist, inquired 
of him : 

“ Monsteur fait de la peinture, n’est-ce pas?” 

““ Out, Princesse.” 

“On me Tavait dit. Mot aussi, g’en fais, Monsieur.” 

“* Charmant, Princesse, nous sommes des collégues.” 

On the way back from Rome Whistler stopped at Florence, and of 
his stay there Mr. J. Kerr-Lawson wrote us the account : | 

“The McNeill has been here and just gone—we had him lightly 
on our hands all day yesterday. 

“We didn’t ‘do’ Florence, for there was a fierce glaring sun and a 
horrible Tramontana raging, so we spent the best of the morning 
trying to write a letter in the rococo manner to the Syndic of Murano 
quite unsuccessfully. [This was after the awards in the Venice Inter- 
national Exhibition. ] 

*¢ After luncheon I took him down to the Uffizi. We seemed to be 
the only people rash enough to brave the awful wind, for we saw no one 
in the Gallery but a frozen Guardia. He—poor fellow—was brushed 
aside by a magnificent and truly awe-inspiring gesture as we approached 
that battered and begrimed portrait in which Velasquez still looks 
out upon the world which he has mastered with an expression of 
superbly arrogant scorn in the Portrait Gallery. 

“It was a dramatic moment—the flat-brimmed chapeau de haut 
forme came off with a grand sweep and was deposited on a stool, and 
then the Master, standing back about six feet from the picture and draw- 
ing himself up to much more than his own full natural height, with his 
left hand upon his breast and the right thrust out magisterially, ex- 
claimed, ‘ Quelle allure!’ ‘Then you should have seen him. After the 
solemn act of homage, when he had resumed his hat, we relaxed con- 
siderably over the lesser immortals of this crazy and incongruous Val- 
halla—what an ill-assorted company! How did they all get together ? 
Liotard, the Swiss, jostles Michael Angelo, Giuseppe MacPherson rubs 
shoulders with Titian, Herkomer hangs beside Ingres, and Poynter is a 
pendant to Sir Joshua. There are the greatest and the least, the noblest 
and the meanest brought together by the capricious folly of succeeding 
directors and harmonised by that touch of vanity that makes the whole 
world kin. 


364 [1899 


BETWEEN LONDON AND Paris 


“One wonders whom they will ask next. Certainly not Whistler. 
They knew quite well he was here, but not the slightest notice was taken 
of him. En revanche, every now and then some vulgar mediocrity 
passes this way, and then the foolish Florentines are lavish with their 
laurels.” 

Whistler had not been long dead when J. received an inspired letter 
from Florence asking him if he could obtain Whistler’s portrait for the 
Uffizi. His answer was that had they appreciated Whistler they might 
have asked him while he was alive, but as they had not had the sense 
or the courage to do so, they had better apply to his executrix. As 
yet there is no portrait of Whistler in the Uffizi. 

After absences from his studio Whistler discovered again that 
pictures and prints were disappearing. It worried him, and he tried to 
trace and recover them. We have little doubt that, at times, Whistler 
lost prints through his carelessness. We know that once his method 
of drying his etchings between sheets of blotting paper thrown on the 
floor was disastrous. One morning an artist came to see us bringing 
a number of beautiful proofs of the second Venice Set, in sheets of blot- 
ting paper as he had bought them from an old rag and paper man in 
Red Lion Passage, who thought they could be no good because the 
margins were cut down and so sold them for a shilling apiece. The 
artist admitted that he did not care for them, and we offered him half-a- 
crown. “ Oh,” he said, “‘ as you are willing to give that, now I shall find 
out what they are really worth.” He got sixty pounds for them, but 
several of the prints separately have since sold for much more. Acci- 
dents like this would account for some of the things Whistler thought 
were stolen. A few works that had disappeared were recovered during 
his lifetime. But shortly after his death there was a sale at the Hotel 
Drouot in which missing paintings, drawings, plates, prints, and even © 
letters were dispersed. Only those who were near him can realise how 
much this troubled and annoyed him during his last years. At the 
same time he began to suffer from another of the evils of success. Pic- 
tures, somewhat resembling his and attributed to him appeared at 
auctions, and others were sent to him for identification or signature by 
persons who had purchased them. If he knew beforehand that one of 
these fakes was coming up in the auction-room, he would send and try to 
stop the sale, or, if submitted to him, he would not give it back. Neither 
1899] 365 


James McNerit WHISTLER 


expedient met with marked success. At present there is a factory of 
Whistlers in full operation, while oils and water-colours and drawings 
ascribed to him without the slightest reason have been openly sold 
at auction, despite the protests made against such swindles. 

Whistler could not stay long from London, and the early summer of 
1899 saw him back at Garlant’s and visiting Mr. Heinemann at Wey- 
bridge. He was in town for the sequel to the Eden affair. He heard 
that, on July 15, there was to be a sale of Sir William Eden’s pictures 
at Christie’s. He went to it and came to us afterwards. 

“Really, it has been beautiful. I know you will enjoy it. It 
occurred to me in the morning—the Baronet’s sale to-day—h’m— 
the Butterfly should see how things are going! And I went home, 
and I changed my morning dress, my dandy straw hat, and then, very 
correct and elegant, I sauntered down King Street into Christie’s. 
At the top of the stairway someone spoke to me. ‘ Well, you know, 
my dear friend,’ I said, ‘I do not know who you are, but you shall 
have the honour of taking mein.’ And on his arm I walked into the big 
room. The auctioneer was crying, ‘Going! Going! Thirty shillings ! 
Going!’ ‘Ha ha!’ I laughed—not loudly, not boisterously; it 
was very delicately, very neatly done. But the room was electrified. 
Some of the henchmen were there; they grow rigid, afraid to move, 
afraid to glance my way out of the corners of their eyes. ‘ Twenty 
shillings! Going!’ the auctioneer would cry. ‘Ha ha!’ I would 
laugh, and things went for nothing and the henchman trembled. Louis 
Fagan came across the room to speak to me—Fagan, representing the 
British Museum, as it were, was quite the most distinguished man 
there. And now, having seen how things were, I took Fagan’s arm. 
‘You,’ I said, ‘ may have the honour of taking me out.’ ” 

He dined with us the next evening and found Mr. Harry Wilson, 
whose brother-in-law, Mr. Sydney Morse, was the friend upon whose 
arm Whistler had entered the auction-room. Mr. Wilson was full 
of the story, and confirmed the “ electric shock” when Whistler 
appeared. 

He ran over to Holland once during the summer. Part of the time 
he was at Pourville, near Dieppe, where he had taken a house for Miss 
Birnie Philip and her mother. The sea was on the right side at Dieppe, 
of which he never tired; at Madame Lefévre’s restaurant he could 
366 [1899 


BETWEEN LONDON AND Paris 


get as good a breakfast as in Paris; and many small marines, oils, and 
water-colours were done before bad weather drove him away. 

Though it is not always easy to identify the place or the time to 
which his small marines belong, for they cover a number of years, 
probably more were made at Dieppe than anywhere else. When he 
did not care to work from the shore there were boatmen who would take 
him out beyond the breakers, where he could get the effect he wished 
at the height above the water that suited him. He used to be seen 
calmly painting away in a dancing row-boat, the boatman holding it 
as steadily as he could. There is as much of the bigness of the ocean 
in these little paintings, which show usually only the grey or blue or 
green, but ever recurring, swell of the wave, or a quiet sea with two or 
three sails on the horizon, as in any big marines that ever were painted. 
He explained his method to his apprentice, Mrs. Addams. When the 
wave broke and the surf made a beautiful line of white, he painted this 
at once, then all that completed the beauty of the breaking wave, then 
the boat passing, and then, having got the movement and the beauty 
that goes almost as soon as it comes, he put in the shore or the horizon. 

In Paris, during the winter of 1899-1900, he took two small rooms 
at the Hotel Chatham, where the last three years he had often stayed, 
afraid to risk the dampness of the Rue du Bac. But they were inner 
rooms with no light and scarcely any ventilation, though most swell 
and more expensive, unless, perhaps, the lady who used to come to 
massage him was included. He had fewer friends in Paris than in 
London, and he was often lonely. He would go to see Drouet and say, 
“ Tu sais, je suis ennuyé.”’ And Drouet, to amuse him, would get up 
little dinners, at which all who were left of the old group of students 
met again. One was given in honour of Becquet, whom Whistler had 
etched almost half a century before. A wreath of laurels was prepared. 
During dinner Drouet said he had met many great men, but, pour la 
morale, none greater than Becquet, who was moved to tears, and the 
laurel wreath was offered to him by Whistler, and Becquet fairly broke 
down ; he “ would hang it on the walls of his studio, always to have it 
before him,” he said. 

Once Drouet took Whistler to the fair at Neuilly, made him ride 
in a merry-go-round. Whistler lost his hat, dropped his eye-glass. 
“What would London journalists say if they could see me now?” 
1899-1900] . 367 


James McNeitt WuisTLER 


he asked. They generally dined at Beaujé’s, in the Passage des Pano- 
ramas, to which Drouet and other artists, literary men, and barristers 
went. Whistler renewed his intimacy with Oulevey, whom he had 
barely seen since the early Paris days. Madame Oulevey’s memories 
are, above all, of Whistler’s dining with them in the Passage des Favor- 
ites at the other end of the Rue Vaugirard, when he wore his pumps and, 
a storm coming up and not a cab to be found in their quarter, and they 
had to keep him for hours. His pumps left an impression on Drouet, 
too, who was sure it was because Whistler wore them by day and could 
not walk in them that he was so often seen driving through the streets 
inacab. And he seemed so tired then, Drouet said, half the time lying 
back, fast asleep. Fantin, the most intimate of his early associates, he 
met but once and then by chance. : 

In February news came of the death of his brother, Doctor Whistler. 
Alexander Harrison writes us : 

‘‘ T chanced to call upon him half an hour after he had received the 
news and, with a quivering voice and tears in his eyes, he told me that he 
considered me a friend and told me his sad loss and asked me to dine 
with him.” 

The two brothers had been devoted since boyhood, and Whistler felt 
the Doctor’s death acutely. It made him the more ready to rejoin 
his friends in London, and two months later found him staying with 
Mr. Heinemann, who had moved from Whitehall Court to Norfolk 
Street. 

There E. dined to meet him the evening after his arrival. Mr. 
Arthur Symons gives, in his Studzes in Seven Arts, his impression of the 
dinner, and of Whistler : 

“ I never saw anyone so feverishly alive as this little old man, with 
his bright withered cheeks, over which a skin was drawn tightly, his 
darting eyes, under their prickly bushes of eyebrow, his fantastically 
creased black and white curls of hair, his bitter and subtle mouth, and, 
above all, his exquisite hands, never at rest.” 

To us the idea of his age was never present. He seemed the 
youngest wherever he was. But to those who saw him for the first 
time it was evident that he was growing old. And he had been before 
the public for so long that people got an exaggerated idea of his age. 
Mr. Symons continues : 

368 [1900 


— 


; MODEL WITH FLOWERS 


PASTEL 


In the possession of J, P. Heseltine, Esq. 
(See fage 360) 


In 


GIRL WITH A RED FEATHER 


OIL 


the possession of the Executors of J. Staats Forbes 


THE INTERNATIONAL 


“‘ Some person officially connected with art was there, an urbane 
sentimentalist ; and after every official platitude there was a sharp 
crackle from Whistler’s corner, and it was as if a rattlesnake had leapt 
suddenly out.” 

When the “ urbane sentimentalist ” remarked that “‘ there never 
was such a thing as an art-loving people, an artistic period,” Whistler 
said: “ Dearme! It’s very flattering to find that I have made you see 
at last. But really, you know, I shall have to copyright my little 
things after this ! ” 

When someone objected to the good manners of the French, because 
they were all on the surface, Whistler suggested, ‘‘ Well, you know, 
a very good place to have them.” 


bp) 


CHAPTER XLITII: THE INTERNATIONAL. THE YEARS 
EIGHTEEN NINETY-SEVEN TO NINETEEN HUNDRED AND 
THREE. 


Tuat artists should hold Exhibitions of International Art was Whistler’s 
idea. He had always hoped for a gallery where he could show his 
work in his own way with the work of men in sympathy with him. 
Often, and years before, he talked to us of this. It mattered little 
to him where the gallery should be, in New York or London, Paris 
or Berlin: the exhibition should not be local or national, but an 
Art Congress for the artists of the world. This was his aim. The 
men whom he wished to have associated with him lived mostly in 
London, where now the greater part of his time was spent, and 
London seemed the place for the first exhibition. He and Mr. E. A. 
Walton tried to lease the Grosvenor Gallery, and when they failed 
they turned to the Grafton. But again there were difficulties, and 
nothing definite was done until 1897, when a young journalist, who 
was painting, Mr. Francis Howard, conceived the idea of promoting 
a company to hold an exhibition at Prince’s Skating Club, Knights- 
bridge. As the artists were to incur no financial responsibilities and 
to have complete artistic control, Whistler consented to co-operate. 
_ The first meeting, the minutes record, was on December 23, 1897, 
and John Lavery, E. A. Walton, G. Sauter, and Francis Howard 
1897] 2A 369 


James McNett WuIsTLER 


were present. Whistler, who had been consulted, at first agreed that 


members of the Royal Academy and other artistic bodies should be — 


admitted, and at the second meeting, February 7, 1898, Mr. Alfred 
Gilbert, R.A., took the chair. A circular, unsigned and undated, was 
then issued calling attention to a proposed exhibition of International 
Art, and on it appeared the names of James McNeill Whistler, Alfred 
Gilbert, Frederick Sandys, John Lavery, James Guthrie, Arthur 
Melville, Charles W. Furse, Charles Ricketts, C. Hazlewood Shannon, 
E. A. Walton, Joseph Farquharson, Maurice Greiffenhagen, Will 
Rothenstein, G. Sauter, Francis Howard. It stated, with a clumsiness 
Whistler could hardly have passed had he seen the circular beforehand, 
that the object of the Society was the much-needed “ organisation in 
London of Exhibitions of the finest Art of the time . . . the non- 
recognition of nationality in Art, and the hanging and placing of 
works irrespective of such consideration. ... The Exhibitions, 
filling as they will an unoccupied place in the cosmopolitan ground 
of International Art, will not be in opposition to existing institutions.” 

An Executive Council appointed itself, and on February 16, 1898, 
Whistler was unanimously elected Chairman. The most distinguished 
artists of every nationality were invited to join an Honorary Council. 
The Executive, to which J., on Whistler’s nomination, was elected in 
March, was to have entire charge of the affairs of the exhibition. There 
were to be no ordinary members, but only honorary members by 
invitation. 

Jealousies and preferences immediately crept in.. Mr. Gilbert 
resigned, which was much to be regretted, and several other English 
members withdrew from the Council, which speedily became as inter- 
national as the name of the society, the International Society of Sculp- 
tors, Painters, and Gravers, into which it formed itself two months later 
(April 23), when officers were elected, and Whistler, proposed by 
Mr. Lavery and seconded by Mr. J. J. Shannon, was chosen President, 
Mr. Lavery Vice-President, and Mr. Francis Howard, Honorary 
Secretary. 

The International was the second society of artists over which 
Whistler presided. Only ten years had passed since his resignation 
from the British Artists, but the change in his position before the 
world was great. The British Artists, an old and decrepit body, had 
370 [1898 


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chosen him as President in the hope that his “ notoriety ” and his 
following of young men would bring the advertisement they needed ; 
the International, a young, vigorous organisation, elected him because 
they knew that no other artist could give them such distinction and 
distinguished foreign artists such assurance that their work would 
be hung in a country where previously, through fear of competition 
and insular prejudice, it had been rejected. In the eighties Whistler 
was mistrusted ; in the nineties he was acknowledged as one of the 
great artists of the century. The change in his position was not greater 
than his influence on contemporary art. This influence had been 
pointed out by the few for some years past. But the last decade had 
strengthened it until it could no longer be denied. The younger 
generation had accepted him in the meanwhile, admitted their debt 
to him, and proclaimed it openly in their work. The New English 
Art Club abjured subject and sentiment for the “ painter’s poetry ” 
wherever it might lurk, whether in the London bus transformed by 
the London atmosphere, or in the Lion-Comique, transfigured on the 
music-hall stage; though, as Whistler once said, the New English 
Art Club was “ only a raft,” while the International was to be a “ battle- 
ship ” of which he would take command. The Glasgow School accepted 
his teaching and then copied his technique, in some cases pushing 
imitation to folly. But still, all that was healthiest and best in the 
art of the country came from these two groups, and members of both 
had made an international reputation before the International was 
founded. Even in the Academy anecdote had lost for an interval 
its pre-eminence, and it looked as if Academicians might begin to under- 
stand that the painter’s sole object need not be to tell a story. Besides, 
there were two artists, R. A. M. Stevenson and J., writing upon art, 
and they taught young men to have faith in Whistler, and the “ new 
criticism was born,” and D. S. MacColl was the name of the first and 
only child. 

Nor was Whistler’s influence confined to England. From the 
early eighties, when the jury was becoming more representative at 
the old Salon, the pictures he sent to it had been hung. From the 
early nineties the new Salon gave them prominence. Other recent 
influences in France had waxed and waned. The realism of Bastien- 
Lepage, which sank into photography with painters of less accom- 
1898] 371 


James McNertt WHISTLER 


plishment, and the square brush-mark were already ozeux jeu. 
Impressionism had swamped itself in chemical problems, and the tech- 
nique of the Impressionists had been degraded to the exaggerations 
and absurdities of the Rose-Crotx, to be swamped in turn by the latest 
fad of all. Whistler brought with him technical sanity, a feeling 
for beauty and reverence for tradition, and he, who had been called 
the most eccentric of poseurs in paint, led the way back to dignity and 
reticence in art, from which he had never swerved. His example 
was revealed in the work of artists of every nationality, either by frank 
imitation or else by their attitude towards Nature or the reserve of 
their technique. Because of this universal recognition, he was best 
qualified for the Presidency of an International Society of Artists. 

The honour was paid him by no official body. Officially, to the 
last, he was destined to go without due recognition. In France he 
was an ordinary Soctétaire of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. 
The National Academy of Design in America was as indifferent to 
him as the Royal Academy in England. His membership in the 
Academies of Dresden, Munich, Rome, and Scotland was a com- 
pliment—a compliment he could and did appreciate—but it carried 
no responsibilities and required no active work, and almost all these 
honours came after the International was started. But the new society, 
if not official, included on its executive the strongest outsiders in Great 
Britain, and had the support of the most distinguished men of his 
profession throughout the world. Their choice of him was an acknow- 
ledgment of his supremacy as artist and an expression of confidence 
in him as leader, and he took no less pleasure in their tribute than 
trouble not to disappoint their expectations. His experience with 
the British Artists was a help in constituting the Society. The sole 
authority rested with the Executive Council, the members of which 
elected themselves and could not be got rid of except by their voluntary 
resignation or expulsion. Theoretically the idea was magnificent, if 
the narrowest and most autocratic. ‘‘ Napoleon and I do these things,” 
Whistler said, and Suffolk Street had taught him that an intelligent 
autocrat is the best leader possible. His policy, if autocratic, was 
broad. In most societies painting held a monopoly, but, in his, 
sculpture and “ graving ” 
rules were far-seeing and practical, and the decline of the Society 
372 | [1898 


should have equal importance. All his — 


¥ 


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since his death is due to the disregard of them: a disregard which 
his associates still on the Council who are true to his memory cannot 
prevent—or forget. 

The first exhibition was opened in May 1898. The Skating Rink 
at Knightsbridge was divided into three large and two small galleries. 
Whistler’s scheme of decoration was adopted, and the hanging was 
more perfect than any up to that time even on the Continent. The 
President’s velarium, without question of patent, was used, and he 
designed the seal for the Society and the cover of the catalogue. The 
artistic success of the show could not be questioned. No such collection 
of modern art had been seen in London, a proof that Whistler was as 
broad as the painters and the populace were sure he was narrow. The 
“Why drag in Velasquez?” story is often quoted by the ignorant 
and the foolish and the stupid. In this Exhibition he dragged in every- 
one of eminence, for, though the ignorant and the foolish and the 
stupid may never understand, the ‘‘ Why drag in Velasquez ?” was 
uttered only for their benefit. Whistler showed a group of early 
pictures: t the Piano, La Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine, Rosa 
Corder, with later works: The Philosopher, The Little Blue Bonnet, 
his own half-length portrait in a white jacket, Brown and Gold. The 
sculpture was as interesting as the painting. There were drawings and 
engravings. Besides, his idea was to have special exhibitions, and 
Aubrey Beardsley, who had just died, was honoured. Before the show 
was over delegates were sent, and communications received, from Paris 
and Venice asking for an exchange of exhibitions. 

Whistler came from Paris for the opening, a quiet affair as the 
endeavour to obtain the presence of the Prince of Wales failed, and he 
lunched with the Council on the opening day and attended one or two 
Sunday afternoon receptions. He agreed that a fine illustrated cata- 
logue should be published by Mr. Heinemann, with The Little Blue 
Bonnet, in photogravure, as frontispiece. If the first exhibition was a 
complete artistic success it proved a complete financial failure. But 
luckily the Society had no pecuniary responsibility. 

Whistler knew it is impossible for a man to serve actively in two 
rival societies ; he had said so to the British Artists; and he deter- 
mined that members of the Council of the International who were 
members of other societies must leave the Society, or, if not, he would. 


1898] 373 


James McNertt WuisTLer 


His decision was precipitated by a new election to the Council. He 
was in Paris, and the fact that two members of the Council, Lavery and 
J., left London at an hour’s notice for the Rue du Bac to arrange matters 
with him shows how anxious he was for the welfare of his Society. 
They arrived early in the morning. Whistler was not up, but sent 
word that they must breakfast with him in the studio. During break- 
fast he talked of everything but the Society ; after breakfast he made 
them listen to a Fourth of July spread-eagle oration squeaked out 
of a primitive gramophone that somebody had given him and that he 
loved ; and it was not until twenty minutes before they had to start 
back that he referred to the Council. Then he had all his plans ready, 
and he stated what he proposed to do, and what he wanted done, what 


must be done—we might add, what was done. And not only at every — 


crisis, but in every detail, he directed the management of the Society, 
and he demanded that every report, every project should be submitted 
to him. He expected the deference due to him as President, and in 


return he gave his unswerving support. Even during his last illness © 


nothing was done without his knowledge and approval. 

The second International Exhibition, or ‘‘ Art Congress,” was held 
at Knightsbridge from May to July 1899. The President came over 
when the hanging was finished. It was arranged this year that a special 
show of his etchings should be made, and a small room was decorated 


and called the White Room. As Whistler was in Paris, he asked J. 


and Mrs. Whibley to go to the studio and select the prints. J. chose 


a number that had not been seen before, principally from the Naval 
Review Series. Whistler, for some reason, resented the selection when 


he saw the prints on the walls. The Committee were in consternation 


and sent for J. Whistler said to him: 

“* Now look what you have done!” 

“But what have I done? Have I done you any harm ?”’ 

And that was the end of it. His objection may have been because 
he feared, as we remember his saying of these prints another time, 


that they were “ beyond the understanding of the abomination outside.” — 
But his fury lasted only for the moment, and he and Lavery and J. © 


passed a good part of the night at work in the gallery on the catalogue. 


Whistler received on the opening day, and in the evening the first _ 
of the Round Table Council dinners was held at the Café Royal, Sir | 


374 [1899 © 


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THE INTERNATIONAL 


James Guthrie presiding. In an admirable speech he expressed not 
only the delight of the Council at being able to enlist the sympathy 
and aid of Whistler, but their love and appreciation for the man and 
his work. The sympathy then existing between the President and 
most of the Council was genuine, and he appreciated it as much as 
they did. After dinner a few of the Council went with him to Sir John 
Lavery’s, where he was staying, and there he read The Baronet and the 
Butterfly, which had just appeared in Paris. This, because of absence 
or ill-health, was the only Council dinner he went to, though for a time 
there was one every year, and at several Rodin presided. 

To the second exhibition the President sent several small canvases 
recently finished. Again the infallible critics discussed them as pro- 
mising works of the past, and were made to eat their words, and again 
in the catalogue Whistler quoted the Times, and to its opinion of to-day 
of “ . . . the vanished hand which drew the Symphony in White and 
Miss Alexander’? compared its opinion “of the moment ” of those 
two pictures, when the Miss Alexander suggested a sketch left “ before 
the colours were dry in a room where the chimney-sweeps were at 
work,” and was “ uncompromisingly vulgar.” ‘‘ Other Times, other 
lines !”? was Whistler’s comment. Three illustrated catalogues were 
published by Messrs. W. H. Ward and Company. Whistler’s Chelsea 
Rags and Trouville were both included in the ordinary editions, and 
the Little Lady Sophie of Soho and Lillie in our Alley were added to 
the édition de luxe. The catalogues until 1910, when even Whistler’s 
format was discarded, are the most interesting issued by any society. 
The second exhibition was less of a success financially than the first, 
and the Society of Artists came near being involved in the crash which 
overtook the financing company. To avoid complications Whistler 
insisted that the Society should have an Honorary Solicitor and 
Treasurer, and Mr. William Webb was appointed. 

In the first and second exhibitions the art of the world was repre- 
sented as it never had been before in England,* as it never has been 
since. In both, attempts to attract the public with music and recep- 
tions and entertainments were made, but Whistler objected to music, 
saying that the two arts should be kept separate, that people who came 


* Sir Henry Cole, in the early sixties, had five international shows at South 
Kensington. 


1899] 375 


James McNett WHIsTLER 


to hear the music could not see the pictures, and people who came to 
see the pictures would not want to hear the music. There were 
misunderstandings with the proprietor and the promoters, the former 
wishing to see some of his friends represented, and the latter to see 
some of their money back, and the outlook was gloomy. Whistler 
wrote a memorable letter in which he said that he, as commander, 
proposed to repel pirates and sink their craft, and they never openly 
got aboard, though a few stowaways did creep in. 

No show was held in 1900, the Paris Universal Exhibition taking 
up the members’ energy, and not until the autumn of 1901 was the third 
exhibition opened at the Galleries of the Royal Institute in Piccadilly. 
There had been official and other changes. Professor Sauter had been 
made Honorary Secretary, pro tem., and the Society, which up till 
now had consisted of the Council only, admitted Associates, and with 
their election the international character began to wane, for, out of 
thirty-two Associates elected, twenty-eight were resident in Great 
Britain. This exhibition was the first to be financially successful. 
The President sent seven small paintings and pastels. Phryne the 
Superb was reproduced in the catalogue, as well as Gold and Orange— 
The Neighbours, and Green and Silver—The Great Sea. 

Professor Sauter devoted himself to furthering the International 
idea of the President, and under his Secretaryship the Society held 
exhibitions of its English members’ work in Budapest, Munich, and 
afterwards in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Chicago, and St. Louis. On 
June 11, 1903, Professor Sauter was relieved temporarily of the Secre- 
taryship and J. took his place. Within a few weeks it was his sad duty 
to call a meeting to announce to the Society the loss they had sustained 
by the death of their President. 

The Council determined to follow the traditions of Whistler and 
to honour his memory. Not only were the American exhibitions 
held, but the Society organised a show of British art in Dusseldorf, 
and made arrangements for a Memorial Exhibition of the President’s 


works in London. In the autumn of 1903 M. Rodin accepted the | 


Presidency, and the fourth exhibition, the first held in the New 
Gallery, was opened in January 1904, in which the late President 
was represented by the Symphony in White, No. III., lent by Mr. 
Edmund Davis: Rose and Gold—The Tulip, lent by Miss Birnie 
376 [1900-04 


a nT ee re ae ee ae ed eae 


A FRESHENING BREEZE 


OIL 


In the possession of J, S, Ure, Esq, 
(See page 367) 


LILLIE IN OUR ALLEY 
BROWN AND GOLD 


OIL 


In the possession of J. J, Cowan, Esq, 


(See page 361) 


Tue AcADEMIE CARMEN 


Philip ; Valparaiso, lent by Mr. Graham Robertson; Symphony in 
Grey—Battersea, lent by Mrs. Armitage; and Study for a Fan, lent 
by Mr. C. H. Shannon. 

In 1905 the most important and successful show in the career of 
the International Society of Sculptors, Painters, and Gravers was 
given; the Memorial Exhibition of the works of James McNeill 
Whistler. For complete success it lacked only the co-operation of 
Whistler’s executrix, which the Council originally understood was 
promised, but which was ultimately withheld. Still, it was the most 
complete exhibition of his works ever given, superior from every point 
of view to the small show at the Scottish Academy the previous year, 
in many respects to the Boston show of the same year, and to the Paris 
Memorial Exhibition, 1905, which was disappointing. As can be seen 
from the elaborate catalogue, more especially the beautifully illus- 
trated édition de luxe published by Mr. Heinemann, the exhibition 
at the New Gallery contained nearly all the principal oil-paintings, the 
largest collection of etchings ever shown together, all but one or two of 
the lithographs, and many of the pastels, water-colours, and drawings. 


CHAPTER XLIV: THE ACADEMIE CARMEN. THE YEARS 
EIGHTEEN NINETY-EIGHT TO NINETEEN HUNDRED 
AND ONE. 


In the autumn of 1898 a circular issued in Paris created a sensation 
in the studios. Whistler was going to open a school, the Académie 
Whistler. The announcement was made by his model, Madame 
Carmen Rossi. Whistler at once wrote from Whitehall Court, where 
he was staying (October 1, 1898), to the papers “‘ to correct an erroneous 
statement, or rather to modify an exaggeration, that an otherwise 
bona fide prospectus is circulating in Paris. An atelier is to be opened 
in the Passage Stanislas, and, in company with my friend, the distin- 
guished sculptor, Mr. MacMonnies, I have promised to attend its 
classes. The patronne has issued a document in which this new Arcadia 
is described as the Académie Whistler and further qualified as the Anglo- 
American School. I would like it to be understood that, having 
hitherto abstained from all plot of instruction, this is no sudden 


1898] 377 


James McNeitt WHISTLER 


assertion in the Ville Lumiere of my own. Nor could I be in any way 
responsible for the proposed mysterious irruption in Paris of whatever 
Anglo-American portends. ‘ American,’ I take it, is synonymous with 


modesty, and ‘ Anglo,’ in art, am unable to grasp at all, otherwise than 


as suggestive of complete innocence and the blank of Burlington House. 
I purpose only, then, to visit, as harmlessly as may be, in turn with 
Mr. MacMonnies, the new academy which has my best wishes, and, if 
no other good come of it, at least to rigorously carry out my promise of 
never appearing anywhere else.” 

Whistler had nothing to do with the financial management, every- 
thing with the system of teaching, and he said that he proposed to offer 
the students his knowledge of a lifetime. It may be, as we have heard, 
that he had been asked, with MacMonnies, to criticise the work of Ary 
Renan’s or Luc-Olivier Merson’s students, and that this gave him the 
idea of visiting a school under his own direction. 

The Passage Stanislas is a small street running off the Rue Notre- 
Dame-des-Champs ; No. 6, a house of two storeys and a courtyard 
or garden at the back which was afterwards covered with glass. 
Over the front door the sign Académie Whistler did appear, but only 
for a short time. The glazed courtyard became a studio, and there 
was another above to which a fine old staircase led. The house had 
been built, or adapted, as a studio, and, except that the walls were 
distempered, no change was made. The rooms were fitted up with 
school furniture ; for this, we believe, Whistler advanced the money. 
Within a few days a vast number of pupils had put their names down, 
deserting the other ateliers of Paris. Some left the English schools, and 
still others came from Germany and America. Whistler was delighted, 
telling us that students were coming in squads, that the Passage was 
crowded, and that owners of carriages struggled with rapins and prize- 
winners to get in. 

Miss Inez Bate (Mrs. Clifford Addams), who was among the earliest 
to put down her name, who remained in the school till the end and who 
became Whistler’s apprentice, has not only told us the story of the 
Académie Carmen, but has given us her record of it and of Whistler’s 
methods of teaching, written at his request and partially corrected by 
him. It is the record of his ‘‘ knowledge of a lifetime,” for he taught 
in the school the truths he had been years formulating, and is of the 
378 [1898 


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greatest importance, as valuable a document as the treatise of Cennino 
Cennini. In the future Mrs. Addams’ statement, revised by Whistler, 
will live. 

He insisted on seriousness. The Académie Carmen was not to be like 
other schools ; instead of singing, there was to be no talking ; smoking 
was not allowed; the walls were not to be decorated with charcoal ; 
studio cackle was forbidden ; if people wanted these things, they could 
go back from whence they came. He was to be received as a master 
visiting his pupils, not as a good fellow in his shirt-sleeves. For the first 
weeks things did not go very well. Carmen was not used to her post, 
the students were not used to such a master, and Whistler was not used 
to them. <A massier was appointed, and the men and women who had 
been working together were separated and two classes formed. Within 
a short time Mrs. Addams was chosen massiére, a position she held until 
the school closed. She writes : 

“The Académie began its somewhat disturbed career in the fall 
of 1898. A letter was received from Mr. Whistler announcing that 
he would shortly appear, and, on the day appointed, the Académie 
Carmen had the honour of receiving him for the first time. He pro- 
ceeded to look at the various studies, most carefully noting under whose 
teaching and in what school each student’s former studies had been 
pursued. 

“‘ Most kindly something was said to each, and to one student who 
offered apology for his drawing, Mr. Whistler said simply, ‘ It is un- 
necessary—I really come to learn—feeling you are all much cleverer 
than I.’ 

“Mr. Whistler, before he left, expressed to the Patronne his wish 
that there should be separate ateliers for the ladies and gentlemen and 
that the present habit of both working together should be immediately 
discontinued. 

“¢ His second visit was spent in consideration of the more advanced 
students. One, whose study suffered from the introduction of an 
unbeautiful object in the background, because it happened to be there, 
was told that, ‘ One’s study, even the most unpretentious, is always 
one’s picture, and must be, in form and arrangement, a perfect harmony 
from the beginning.’ With this unheard-of advice, Mr. Whistler 
turned to the students, whose work he had been inspecting and 


1898 | 379 


James McNertt WuisTLeR 


intimated that they might begin to paint, and so really learn to draw, 
telling them that the true understanding of drawing the figure comes by 
having learned to appreciate the subtle modellings by the use of the 
infinite gradation that paint makes possible. 

“On his third visit he turned to one student and picked up her 
palette, pointing out that being the instrument on which the painter 
plays his harmony, it must be beautiful always, as the tenderly-cared-for 
violin of the great musician. 

“‘ He suggested that it would be a pleasure to show them his way 
of painting, and if this student could, without too much difficulty, 
clean her palette, he would endeavour to show them ‘ the easiest way 
of getting into difficulties.’ 

“And it was then that Mr. Whistler’s palette was given. His 
whole system lies in the complete mastery of the palette—on the palette 
the work must be done before transferring one note on to the canvas. 

“‘ He recommended the small oval palettes as being easy to hold. 
White was placed at the top edge in the centre, in generous quantity, 
and to the left came in succession yellow ochre, raw sienna, burnt 
sienna, raw umber, cobalt, and mineral blue; while to right, vermilion, 
Venetian red, Indian red, and black. Sometimes the burnt sienna would 
be placed between the Venetian and Indian red, but generally the 
former placing of colours was insisted upon. 

‘“¢ A mass of colour, giving the fairest tone of the flesh, would then 
be mixed and laid in the centre of the palette near the top, and a 
broad band of black curving downward from this mass of light flesh- 
note to the bottom, gave the greatest depth possible in any shadow, 
and so, between the prepared light and the black, the colour was spread, 
and mingled with any of the various pure colours necessary to obtain 
the desired changes of note, until there appeared on the palette a tone- 
picture of the figure that was to be painted, and at the same time a 
preparation for the background was made on the left in equally careful 
manner. 

“Many brushes were used, each one containing a full quantity of 
every dominant note, so that when the palette presented as near a 
reproduction of the model and background as the worker could obtain, 
the colour could be put down with a generous flowing brush. 

‘Mr. Whistler said, ‘I do not interfere with your individuality. I 
380 [1898 


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place in your hands a sure means of expressing it, if you can learn 
to understand, and if you have your own sight still.” Each student 
prepared his or her palette, in some the mass of light would exceed the 
dark, in others the reverse would be the case. Mr. Whistler made no 
comments on these conditions of the students’ palettes : ‘ I do not teach 
art ; I teach the scientific application of paint and brushes.’ His one 
insistence was that no painting on the canvas should be begun until 
the student felt he could go no further on the palette; the various 
and harmonious notes were to represent, as nearly as he could see, the 
model and background that he was to paint. 

“Mr. Whistler would often refrain from looking at the students’ 
canvas, but would carefully examine the palette, saying that there 
he could see the progress being made, and that it was really much more 
important for it to present a beautiful appearance, than for the canvas 
to be fine and the palette inharmonious. He said, ‘If you cannot 
manage your palette, how are you going to manage your canvas ?” 

“‘'These statements sounded like heresy to the majority of the 
students, and they refused to believe the reason and purpose of such 
teaching, and as they had never before received even a hint to consider 
the palette of primary importance, they insisted in believing that this 
was but a peculiarity of Mr. Whistler’s manner of working, and that, 
to adopt it, would be with fatal results ! 

“The careful attempts to follow the subtle modellings of flesh 
placed in a quiet, simple light, and therefore extremely grey and intri- 
cate in its change of form, brought about necessarily, in the commence- 
ment of each student’s endeavour, a rather low-toned result. One 
student said to Mr. Whistler that she did not wish to paint in such low 
tones, but wanted to keep her colour pure and brilliant ; he answered, 
‘then keep it in the tubes, it is your only chance at first.’ 

“They were taught to look upon the model as a sculptor would, 
using the paint as a modeller does his clay ; to create on the canvas a 
statue, using the brush as a sculptor his chisel, following carefully each 
change of note, which means ‘form’; it being preferable that the 
figure should be presented in a simple manner, without an attempt to 
obtain a thousand changes of colour that are there in reality, and make 
it, first of all, really and truly exist in its proper atmosphere, than that 
it should present a brightly coloured image, pleasing to the eye, but 
1898] 381 


James McNertt WHISTLER 


without solidity and non-existent on any real plane. This, it will be 
seen, was the reason of Mr. Whistler’s repeated and insistent commands 
to give the background the most complete attention, believing that by 
it alone the figure had a reason to exist. 

“Mr. Whistler would often paint for the students. 

“Once he modelled a figure, standing in the full, clear light of the 
atelier, against a dull, rose-coloured wall. After spending almost an 
hour upon the palette, he put down with swift, sure touches, the notes 
of which his brushes were already generously filled, so subtle that those 
standing close to the canvas saw apparently no difference in each 
successive note as it was put down, but those standing at the proper 
distance away noticed the general turn of the body appear, and the 
faint subtle modellings take their place, and finally, when the last deli- 
cate touch of light was laid on, the figure was seen to exist in its proper 
atmosphere and at its proper distance within the canvas, modelled, 
as Mr. Whistler said, ‘in painter’s clay,’ and ready to be taken up the 
next day and carried yet further in delicacy, and the next day further 
still, and so on until the end. 

“‘ And he insisted that it was as important to train the eye as the 
hand, that long accustoming oneself to seeing crude notes in Nature, 
spots of red, blue, and yellow in flesh where they are not, had harmed 
the eye, and the training to readjust the real, quiet, subtle note of 
Nature required long and patient study. ‘To find the true note is 
the difficulty ; it is comparatively easy to employ it when found.’ 

“He once said that had he been given at the commencement of 
his artistic career what he was then offering, his work would have been 
different. But he found in his youth no absolute definite facts, and he 
‘ fell in a pit and floundered,’ and from this he desired to save whom he 
could. ‘ Allis so simple,’ he would say, ‘ it is based on proved scientific 
facts ; follow this teaching and you must learn to paint ; not necessarily 
learn art, but, at least, absolutely learn to paint what you see.’ 

“He also demanded the student to abandon all former methods 
of teaching, unless in harmony with his own, and to approach the 
science as taught by himself in a simple and trustful mannet. 

“¢ The students, used to having any little sketch praised, and finding 
such efforts remained unnoticed by Mr. Whistler, while an intelligent 
and careful, though to their eyes stupid, attempt to model in simple 
Seer [1898 


Tue AcCADEMIE CARMEN 


form and colour would receive approbation, grew irritated, and the 
majority left for a more congenial atmosphere. 

“ It was pointed out that a child, in the simple innocence of infancy, 
painting the red coat of the toy soldier red indeed, is in reality nearer 
the great truth than the most accomplished trickster with his clever 
brushwork and brilliant manipulation of many colours. 

“‘¢ Distrust everything you have done without understanding it. 
It is not sufficient to achieve a fine piece of painting. You must know 
how you did it, that the next time you can do it again, and never have 
to suffer from that disastrous state of the clever artist, whose friends 
say to him, what a charming piece of painting, do not touch it again, 
and, although he knows it is-incomplete, yet he dare not but comply, 
because he knows he might never get the same clever effect again. 

**¢ Remember which of the colours you most employed, how you 
managed the turning of the shadow into the light, and if you do not 
remember scrape out your work and do it all over again, for one fact is 
worth a thousand misty imaginings. You must be able to do every 
part equally well, for the greatness of a work of art lies in the perfect 
harmony of the whole, not in the fine painting of one or more details.’ 

“It was many months before a student produced a canvas which 
showed a grasp of the science he had so patiently been explaining. Mr. 
Whistler delighted in this, and had the canvas placed on an easel and 
in a frame that he might more clearly point out to the other students 
the reason of its merit ; it showed primarily an understanding of the 
two great principles; first, it represented a figure zmstde the frame 
and surrounded by the atmosphere of the studio, and secondly, it was 
created of one piece of flesh, simply but firmly painted and free from 
mark of brush. As the weeks went on, and the progress in this student’s 
work continued, Mr. Whistler finally handed over to her [Mrs. Addams] 
the surveillance of the new-comers and the task of explaining to them 
the first principles of his manner. 

“The Académie had the distinction of causing the rumour that 
something was being taught there, something definite and absolute. 

“‘ A large number of students who had been in the Académie for a 
short time and left, returned, dissatisfied with other schools, that they 
might once more satisfy themselves that nothing was to be learned 
there after all. 

1898] 383 


James McNett WHuisTLerR 


“Mr. Whistler allowed this to continue for some time, but finally, 
the fatigue of such constant changes caused him to issue an order that 
the Académie Carmen should be tried but once. 

“‘The students in the men’s life-class were constantly changing. 
On Christmas Day, Mr. Whistler invited them to visit him in his 
atelier and showed them many of his own canvases in various stages of 
completeness ; explaining how certain results had been obtained, and 
how certain notes had been blended, and assuring them that he used 
the science he was teaching them, only that each student would arrange 
it according to his own needs as time went on, begging them not to 
hesitate to ask him any question that they wished, or to point out 
anything they failed to understand. There was an increased enthu- 
siasm for a few weeks, but gradually the old spirit of misunderstanding 
and mistrust returned, and the men’s class again contained but few 
students. 

“ Another disappointment to them was that Mr. Whistler explained 
when they showed him pictures they had painted with a hope to exploit 
as pupils of the Master in the yearly Salon, that this was impossible, 
that their complete understanding of the Great Principles and the 
fitting execution of their application could not be a matter of a few 
months’ study, and he told them he was like a chemist who put drugs 
into bottles, and he certainly should not send those bottles out in his 
name unless he was quite satisfied with, and sure of, the contents. 

“The last week of the first year arrived, and Mr. Whistler spent 
the whole of each morning at the Académie. The supervision of one 
student’s work was so satisfactory that he communicated with her, 
after the closing of the Académie, to announce that he desired to enter 
into an apprenticeship with her, for a term of five years, as he con- 
sidered it would take fully that time to teach her the whole of his 
Science and make of her a finished craftsman ; with her artistic develop- 
ment he never for a moment pretended to interfere—‘ that,’ he said, 
‘is or is not superb—it was determined at birth, but I can teach you 
how to paint.’ 

“* So, on the 2oth of July (1899), the Deed of Apprenticeship [with 
Mrs. Addams] was signed and legally witnessed, and she ‘ bound herself 
to her Master to learn the Art and Craft of a painter, faithfully to serve 
after the manner of an Apprentice for the full term of five years, his 
384 [1899 


Se ee er 


THE AcADEMIE CARMEN 


secrets keep and his lawful commands obey, she shall do no damage to 
his goods nor suffer it to be done by others, nor waste his goods, nor 
lend them unlawfully, nor do any act whereby he might sustain loss, 
nor sell to other painters nor exhibit during her apprenticeship nor 
absent herself from her said Master’s service unlawfully, but in all 
things as a faithful Apprentice shall behave herself towards her said 
Master and others during the said term. . .. And the said Master, 
on his side, undertakes to teach and instruct her, or cause her to be 
taught and instructed. But if she commit any breach of these cove- 
nants he may immediately discharge her.’ 

“‘ Into the hands of his Apprentice—also now the massiére—Mr. 
Whistler gave the opening of the school the second year, sending all 
instructions to her from Pourville, where he was staying. 

** Each new candidate for admission should submit an example of 
his or her work to the massiére, and so prevent the introduction into 
the Académie of, first, those who were at present incompetent to place 
a figure in fair drawing upon the canvas; and secondly, those whose 
instruction in an adverse manner of painting had gone so far that their 
work would cause dissension and argument in the Académie. Unfortu- 
nately, this order was not well received by some, though the majority 
were willing to accede to any desire on the part of Mr. Whistler. 

“*A number absolutely refused to suffer any rule, and preferred 
to distrust what they could not understand, and the talk among the 
students of the Quartier was now in disparagement of the Académie. — 

“Compositions were never done in the school. It was so much 
more important to learn to paint and draw, for, as Mr. Whistler said, ‘ if 
ever you saw anything really perfectly beautiful, suppose you could not 
draw and paint ! —‘ The faculty for compositions is part of the artist, 
he has it, or he has it not—he cannot acquire it by study—he will only 
learn to adjust the composition of others, and, at the same time, he 
uses his faculty in every figure he draws, every line he makes, while 
in a large sense, composition may be dormant from childhood until 
maturity, and there it will be found in all its fresh vigour, waiting for 
the craftsman to use the mysterious quality in his adjustment of his 
perfect drawings to fit their spaces.’ 

“ The third and last year (1900) of the Académie Carmen was marked 
at its commencement by the failure to open a men’s life-class. Mr. 
1900] 28 385 


James McNeiLtit WHISTLER 


Whistler had suffered so greatly during the preceding years from their 
inability to comprehend his principles and also from the short time the 
students remained in the school, that at the latter part of the season 
he often refused to criticise in the men’s class at all. He would call 
sometimes on Sunday mornings and take out and place upon easels 
the various studies that had been done by the men the previous week, 
and often he would declare that nothing interested him among them 
and that he should not criticise that week, that he could not face the 
fatigue of the ‘ blankness ’ of the atelier. 

“The Académie was opened in October 1900 by a woman’s life- 
class which was well attended. The school had been moved to an old 
building in the Boulevard Montparnasse, but shortly after Mr. Whistler 
was taken very ill and he was forced to leave England on a long voyage. 
He wrote a letter to the students that never reached them, then, from 
Corsica, another, with his best wishes for the New Century, and his 
explanation of the doctor’s abrupt orders. The Académie was kept 
open by the Apprentice until the end of March (1901), but the faith 
of the students seemed unable to bear further trials, and after great 
discontent at Mr. Whistler’s continued absence and a gradual dwindling 
away of the students until there were but one or two left, the Apprentice 
wrote of this to Mr. Whistler.” 

Whistler wrote from Ajaccio a formal letter of dismissal to the few 
students left, kissing the tips of their rosy fingers, bidding them God- 
speed and stating the case that history might be made. The reading 
of the letter by the massiére in the atelier closed the school, and an 
experiment to which Whistler brought enthusiasm, only to meet from 
the average student the distrust the average artist had shown him all 
his life. One of the last things he did before the close was to make 
an apprentice also of Mr. Clifford Addams, the one man who remained 
faithful. And in his case, too, a Deed of Apprenticeship was drawn up 
and signed. 

The story of the Académie is carried on in the following letter from 
Mr. Frederick MacMonnies, concerning his connection with it : 

**., . [had always heard so much about his being impossible, but 
the more I saw of him the more I realised that anyone who could quarrel 
with him must be written down an ass. 

‘“‘An instance of his rare straightforwardness and frankness in 
386 [1901 


gee eae 


Tue AcaADEMIE CARMEN 


friendship occurred in the Carmen School. He used to come up to 
my studio just before breakfast, and we would go off to Lavenue’s or 
the Café du Cardinal. 

‘One morning he said he had a great affair on hand. Carmen was 
going to open the school and he had agreed to teach, a thing he had 
always said was shocking, useless, and encouragement of incapables. 
He suggested I help him out with teaching the sculptor pupils and the 
drawing, so I gladly agreed. 

“¢ All the schools in Paris were deserted immediately, and the funny 
little studios of Carmen’s place were packed with all kinds of boys and 
girls, mostly Americans, who had tried all styles of teaching. 

** Mr. Whistler, having a full sense of a picturesque grande enirée, 
did not appear until the school was in full swing about a week after the 
opening, and until the pupils had passed the palpitating stage and were 
in a dazed state of expectancy and half collapsed into nervous prostra- 
tion. The various samples of such awaiting him represented the 
methods of almost every teacher in Paris. 

“‘ He arrived, gloves and cane in hand, and enjoyed every minute 
of his stay, daintily and gaily touching very weighty matters. A few 
days after his arrival I went to the school and found the entire crew 
painting as black as a hat—delicate, rose-coloured pearly models 
translated into mulattoes, a most astonishing transformation. As time 
went on the blackness increased. Finally, one day, I suggested to one 
of the young women who was particularly dreary, to tone her study up. 
She informed me she saw it so. I took her palette and keyed the figure 
into something like the delicate and brilliant colouring, much to her 
disgust. When I had finished, she informed me, ‘ Mr. Whistler told 
me to paint it that way.’ I told her she had misunderstood, that he 
had never meant her to paint untrue. Several criticisms among the 
men of the same sort of thing, and I left. 

“ Of course, all this was carried to Whistler, and a few days later 
after breakfast, over his coffee, he waved his cigarette towards me and 
said, ‘ Now, my dear MacMonnies, I like you—and I am going to talk to 
you the way your mother does (he used to play whist in Paris with my 
mother, and they made a most amusing combination). Now, you see, 
I have always believed there has been something radically wrong with 
all this teaching that has been going on in Paris all these years in Julian’s 
1901] 387 


JAMEs McNeErILtL WHISTLER 


and the rest. I decided years ago the principle was false. They give 
the young things men’s food when they require pap. My idea is to 
give them three or four colours—let them learn to model and paint 
the form and line first until they are strong enough to use others. If 
they become so, well and good; if not, let them sink out of sight.’ I 
suggested the doubt that their eyes might in this way be trained to 
see wrong. No, he did not agree with that. Anyway, I apologised, 
and said I was a presuming and meddlesome ass, and if I had known he 
was running his school on a system, I would have remained silent. If 
you could have seen the charming manner, the frank kindness and 
friendly spirit with which he undertook to remonstrate, you would 
understand how much I admired his generous spirit. 

‘“¢ Few men under the circumstances (I being very much his junior) 
would not have made a great row and got upon their high horses, and 
we would have quit enemies. 

“‘ Later, I found that the sculptor pupils did not arrive in droves 
to be taught by me, and the drawing criticisms unnecessary, as the 
school had become a tonal modelling school and my criticisms super- 
fluous. I proposed to Mr. Whistler that I was de trop, and that it 
could only be properly done by him. He agreed and I left. 

““M. Rodin (or his friends) wished to take my place, but Mr. 
Whistler, I heard, said he could not under any circumstances have any- 
one replace MacMonnies, as it might occasion comment unfavourable to 
me. Now I consider that one of the rarest of friendly actions, as a 
knew he would not have objected to Rodin otherwise. 

*“¢ A canny, croaking friend of mine, who hated Whistler and never 
lost an opportunity of misquoting and belittling him, dropped in at 
my house a few nights after my resignation from the school, quite 
full up with croaks of delight that we had fallen out, as he sup- 
posed, and that the row he had long predicted had finally come. 
I laughed it off, and after dinner a familiar knock, and who should 
be ushered in but Mr. Whistler, asking my mother to play another 
game of whist. 

‘“‘ A rather amusing thing occurred in my studio. 

“‘ A rich and spread-eagle young American got into a tussle of wits 
with Whistler—neither had met before (Whistler, however, knew and 
liked his brother)—on the advantage of foreign study and life abroad. 


388 [1901 — 


~~ es eS iy & 


j 
‘ 


’ 


ie GOASIN Ol BRIS CAN Y: 
ALONE With IRE IDE 


OIL 


Formerly in the possession of Ross Winans, Esq. 


(See page 67) 


x 
Naa Se Sable OS 


THE SEA, SPOURVIELE 


OIL 
In the possession of A. A. Hannay, Esq. 


(See page 366) 


THE 
ARRANGEMENT 


(Picture in Progress) 


From a photograph lent by 
Pickford R. Waller, Esq. 


(See page 432) 


FUR JACKET 


IN BLACK 


OIL 


AND BROWN 


(Completed picture) 


In the Worcester Museum, 
Massachusetts 


THe AcapkMIE CARMEN 


I cannot remember all the distinguished and amusing arguments or the 
delightful appreciation of the French people of Whistler, or of the 
tather boring and rather brutal jabbing of the young man. At any 
rate, Whistler defended himself admirably, always keeping his temper, 
_ which the young man wished him to lose inorder to trip him up. I saw 
that Whistler was bored and tried to separate them, but it had gone 
too far. Finally, Whistler held out his hand and with his charming 
quizzical smile said, ‘ Good-bye, oh, ah, I am so glad to have met you— 
on account of your brother ! ’ 

“The year before Whistler died, in December, I went to America 
on a short trip. I hadn’t been home for a number of years. Whistler 
had always said he would go back with me some time, so I telegraphed 
him at Bath to induce him to come with me. He replied by telegram, 
‘Merry Xmas, bon voyage, but I fear you will have to face your country 
without me.’ ” 

To anyone familiar with art schools Whistler’s idea appeared 
revolutionary, but he knew.that he was carrying on the tradition of 
Gleyre. Art schools are now conducted on such different principles 
that a comparison may be useful. Usually the student is not taught to 
do anything. The master puts him at drawing, telling him, after the 
drawing is finished, where it is wrong. The student starts again and 
drops into worse blunders because he has not been told how to avoid 
the first. If he improves, it is by accident, or his own intelligence, 
more than by teaching. At length, when the pupil has learned enough 
drawing to avoid the mistakes of the beginner, and to make it difficult 
for the master to detect his faults, he is put at painting, and the problem 
becomes twice as difficult for the student. In drawing, each school 
has some fixed method of working, nowhere more fixed than at the 
Royal Academy, which leads to nothing—or Paris. In painting, the 
professor corrects mistakes in colour, in tone, in value, which is easier 
than to correct drawing, and the student becomes more confused than 
ever, for he is in colour less likely than in drawing to tumble unaided 
on the right thing. As to the use of colours, the mixing of colours, 
the arrangement of the palette, the handling of tools—these are never 
taught in modern schools. The result is that the new-comer imitates 
the older students—the favourites—and shuffles along somehow. Any 
attempt on the part of the master to impress his character on the 


1901] 389 


James McNeitt WuisTLeR 


students would be resented by most of them, and any attempt at 
individuality on their part would be resented by the master, for the 
official art school, like the official technical school, is the resort of the 
incompetent. The Royal Academy goes so far as to change the visitors 
in its painting schools—that is, the teachers—every month, and the 
confusion to the student handed on from Mr. Sargent to Sir Hubert 
von Herkomer and then to Sir Lawrence ip can hardly be 
imagined, 

For this sort of art school Whistler had no toleration—its product 
is the amateur or Academician. When he was asked, “‘ Then you would 
do away with all the art schools ? ” Whistler answered, ‘‘ Not at all, 
they are harmless, and it is just as well when the genius appears that 
_he should find the fire alight and the room warm, an easel close 
at hand and the model sitting, but I have no doubt he'll alter the 
pose!” 

Whistler would have liked to practise the methods of the Old Masters. 
He would have taught the students from the beginning, from the 
grinding and mixing of the colours. He believed that students should 
work with him as apprentices worked with their masters in earlier times. 
Artists then taught the student to work as they did. How much 
individuality, save the master’s, is shown in Rubens’ canvases, mostly 
done by his pupils ? So long as Van Dyck remained with Rubens he 
worked in Rubens’ manner, learning his trade. When he felt strong 
enough to say what he wanted to say in his own way as an accomplished 
craftsman, he left the school and set up for himself. Raphael was 
trained in Perugino’s studio, helped his master, and, when he had 
learned all he could there, opened one of his own. And this is the way 
Whistler wished his students to work with him. The misfortune is that 
he made the experiment when it was too late to profit by the skill 
of the pupils whom he wished to train to be of use to him. He knew 
that it would take at least five years for students to learn to use the 
tools he put in their hands, and the fact that, at the end of three years, 
when the school closed, a few of his pupils could paint well enough for 
their painting to be mistaken for his shows how right he was. If, after 
five years, they could see for themselves the beauty that was around 
them, they would by that time have been taught how to paint it in 
their own way, for what he could do was to teach them to translate 


390 [1901 


i mit 5 ae I Ee ee ee ee 


Tue Acaptmirt CARMEN 


their vision on to canvas. Mr. Starr says that Whistler “ told me to 
paint things exactly as I saw them. ‘ Young men think they should 
paint like this or that painter. Be quite simple, no fussy foolishness, 
you know, and don’t try to be what they call strong. When a picture 
smells of paint,’ he said slowly, ‘ it’s what they call strong.’ ” 

Had his health been maintained, had he not been discouraged 
because students mostly came to him with the desire to do work which 
looked easy, great results would have been accomplished. His regret 
was that students did not begin with him. Mrs, Addams has told us of 
the great success of one, Miss Prince, who had never been in an art 
school. She had nothing to unlearn. She understood, and, at the 
end of a year, had made more progress than any. There were excep- 
tions among the more advanced, men who to-day are well-known 
artists and who, looking back, admit how much they learned. Frederick 
Frieseke, Henry S. Hubbell, and C. Harry White passed through the 
school. One of the few Frenchmen was Simon Bussy, who describes 
Whistler as trés distingué, tres fin, trés autoritaire, though not so stimulat- 
ing a master as Gustave Moreau, under whom he had been studying. 
But the greater number of students, elementary or advanced, thought 
that Whistler was going to teach them, by some short cut, to arrive at 
distinction. When they found that, though the system was different, 
they had to go through the same drudgery as in any school, they were 
dissatisfied and left. Moreover, the strict discipline and the separation 
of the sexes were unpopular. Nor could they understand Whistler. 
Many of his sayings remembered by them explain their bewilderment. 

One day, Whistler, going into the class, found three new pupils. 
To these he said : 

“¢ Where have you studied ? ” 

** With Chase.” 

** Couldn’t have done better ! ” 

*¢ And where have you studied ? ” 

“With Bonnat.” 

“You couldn’t have done better ! ” 

*¢ Where have you studied ? ” 

**T have never studied anywhere, Mr. Whistler.” 

“T am sure you could not have done better!” 

To the young lady who told him that she was painting what she 
1901] 391 


James McNett WuiIsTLeR 


saw, he answered, “ The shock will come when you see what you 
paint ! ” 

To the man who was smoking, he said, “ Really, you had better stop 
painting, for you might get interested in your work, and your pipe 
would go out!” 

Of a superior amateur he inquired, “ Have you been through 
college ? I suppose you shoot? Fish, of course? Go in for foot- 
ball, no doubt? Yes? Well, then I can let you off for painting.” 

We asked Whistler how much truth there was in these stories. His 
answer was: ‘‘ Well, you know, the one thing I cannot be responsible 
for in my daily life is the daily story about me.” 

But he admitted they were, in the main, true. He added one inci- 
dent we have heard from no one else that explains a peculiarity to which 
we have referred.. In Venice, he said, he got into the habit, as he 
worked on his plates, of blowing away the little powder raised by the 
needle ploughing through the varnish to the copper, and, unconsciously, 
he kept on blowing when painting or drawing. Once, after he had 
painted before the students and had left the studio, there was heard in 
the silence a sound of blowing. Then another student began blowing 
away as he worked, and so they went on. ‘‘ Well,” they said, “‘ already 
we have la mantére, and that is much.” Whistler heard of it and broke 
himself of the habit. One day he saw on the wall in the men’s studio, 
written in charcoal : 


“I bought a palette gust like hits, 
His colours and his brush. 
The devil of it 1s, you see, 
I did not buy bts touch.” 


Whistler’s methods and manner confused the average students who 
came, but his faith in his system was as great as the students’ unbelief. 
He suggested that his criticisms of their work should be recorded on 
a gramophone. He thought of opening another class in London. 
The only time E. saw the Académie, towards the beginning of the second 
year, the whole place was full of life and go. In the end, the want of 
confidence in him, his illness, and his absence broke up the school. But 
he sowed seed which will bring forth a thousandfold. For, just as 
his theory of art is now recognised as he stated it in The Ten O’Clock, 
392 : [1900 


Tue BEGINNING OF THE END 


so will his practice, proved by his work and teaching, be accepted in 
the future. 


CHAPTER XLV: THE BEGINNING OF THE END. THE 
YEAR NINETEEN HUNDRED. 


In the spring of 1900 an event of great importance in our relations 
with Whistler occurred. ‘Towards the end of May he asked us to 
write his Life. Now that his fame was established, a great deal, indeed 
far too much, was written about him. Unauthorised publications 
appeared or were in preparation, and it was evident that more would 
follow. Whistler shrank from being written about by people not in 
sympathy with him or incapable of understanding him. He was, 
and is, to many critics and commentators a riddle or an affront. 
Mistakes were made, facts were distorted. Mr. Heinemann sug- 
gested, first that’ he should write his autobiography, then that 
his biography should be written with his authority by someone in 
whom he had confidence. Mr. Heinemann thought of Henley, but 
Whistler objected. Mr. Charles Whibley was proposed by Mr. Heine- 
mann, but again Whistler objected. It was after this that either Mr. 
Heinemann or Whistler mentioned the name of Joseph Pennell. 

We had been abroad for a few days, and returned to London on 
May 28 to find a letter from Mr. Heinemann telling J. of this ‘‘ magni- 
ficent opportunity.” No one could appreciate more fully the honour 
as well as the responsibility. J. saw Whistler at once, and said, “ You 
are the modern Cellini and you should write it yourself.” 

Whistler had neither the time nor patience, but he promised to 
contribute what he could to J.’s book. We knew that while staying 
at Whitehall Court he had written two, or perhaps more, autobio- 
graphical chapters at Mr. Heinemann’s suggestion. Miss Birnie 
Philip, after the first edition of our Life was published, though we had 
proved our authority in the English Law Courts, wrote to the Times 
(November 24, 1908) that Whistler “‘ stated his objections to bio- 
graphers in a fragment written in 1896 of what was intended to be 
the story of his life. The following passages will make his opinions 
clear : 


1900] 393 


James McNeEitt WHISTLER 


‘¢* Determined that no mendacious scamp shall tell the foolish 
truths about me when centuries have gone by, and anxiety no longer 
pulls at the pen of the “ pupil ” who would sell the soul of his master, 
I now proceed to take the wind out of such speculator by immediately 
furnishing myself the fiction of my own biography, which shall remain, 
and is the story of my life. . . 

“** Curiously, too, I find no grief in noting the closing of more 
than one middle-aged eye that I had before now caught turned warily 
upon me with a view to future foolscap improved from slight 
intimacy. ... 

“‘* How tiresome, indeed, are the Griswolds of this world, and 
how offensive. Pinning their unimportant names on the linen of the 
great as they return the intercepted wash, they go down to Posterity 
with their impudent bill, and Posterity accepts and remembers them 
as the unrequited benefactors of ungrateful genius !” ” 

This, according to Miss Birnie Philip, was written in 1896. Whistler 
added to the record, Mr. Heinemann says, while living with him at 
Whitehall Court. But Whistler soon found the task beyond him, 
and so, changing his mind on the subject, asked J. to write the story 
of his life and his work in 1900. 

Almost immediately it was arranged that E. should collaborate and 
that we should do the book together. Whistler promised to help us 
in every way and, when in the mood, to tell us what he could about 
himself and his life, with the understanding that we were to take notes. 
He was not a man from whom dates and facts could be forced. His 
method was not unlike that of Dr. Johnson, who, when Boswell asked 
for biographical details, said, ‘‘ They’ll come out by degrees as we talk 
together.” Whistler had to talk in his own fashion, or not at all; we 
were to listen, no matter where we met or under what conditions. 
It was also agreed that there were to be two volumes, one devoted to 
his life, the other to his work, and that photographs should be taken 
of the pictures in his studio to illustrate the volumes. Whistler’s 
pictures were being carried off only too quickly, and whatever we needed 
for illustration, or as a record, would have to be photographed at once. 

The duty of making the notes fell to E., and, from that time until 
his death, she kept an account of our meetings with him. He was true 
to his promise. We were often in the studio, and he spent evening after 


394 [1900 


Tue BEGINNING OF THE END 


evening with us. Sometimes we dined with him at Garlant’s Hotel 
or at the Café Royal, sometimes we met at Mr. Heinemann’s, but usually 
he dined with us in Buckingham Street, coming so frequently that he 
said to us one June evening : 

“Well, you know, you will feel about me as I did in the old days 
about the man I could never ask to dinner because he was always there ! 
I couldn’t ask him to sit down, because there he always was, already in 
his chair ! ” 

Once he told E. to write to J., who was out of town, that he was 
living on our staircase. During those evenings he gave us many facts 
and much material used in previous chapters. He began by telling 
us of the years at home, his student days in Paris, his coming to Chelsea, 
and, though dates were not his strong point, we soon had a consecutive 
story of that early period. Every evening made us wish more than ever 
that he could have written instead of talking, for we soon discovered the 
difficulty of rendering his talk. He used to reproach J. with “ talking 
shorthand,” but no one was a greater master of the art than himself. 
And so much of its meaning was in the pause, the gesture, the punc- 
tuating hands, the laugh, the adjusting of the eye-glass, the quick look 
from the keen blue eyes flashing under the bushy eyebrows. The 
impression left with us from the close intercourse of this summer was 
of his wonderful vitality, his inexhaustible youth. As yet illness 
had not sapped his energy. He was sixty-six, but only the greyness 
of the ever-abundant hair, the wrinkles, the loose throat suggested age. 
He held himself as erect, he took the world as gaily, his interests were as 
fresh as if he were beginning life. Some saw a sign of feebleness in 
the nap after dinner, but this was a habit of long standing, and after 
ten minutes, or less, he was awake, revived for the talk that went on 
until midnight and later. 

Whistler wished us to have the photographing in the studio begun 
without delay. Our first meeting, after the preliminaries were settled, 
was on June 2, 1900; on the 6th the photographer and his assistant 
were in Fitzroy Street with J. to superintend. It took long to select 
the things which should be done first, Mr. Gray, the photographer, 
picking out those which he thought would come best, Whistler preferring 
others that Gray feared might not come at all, though the idea was that, 
in the end, everything in the studio should be photographed. Whistler 


1900] 395 


James McNerit WHIsTLER 


found himself shoved in a corner, barricaded behind two or three big 
cameras, and he could scarcely stir. He grew impatient, he insisted 
that he must work. As the light was not good for the photographer, 
some canvases were moved out in the hall, some were put on the roof, 
but the best place was discovered to be Mr. Wimbush’s studio in the 
same building. Whistler went with J. through the little cabinets 
where pastels and prints were kept, and decided that a certain number 
must be worked on, but that the others could be photographed. Then 
they lunched together with Miss Birnie Philip, Gray photographing 
all the while, and then Whistler’s patience was exhausted and everybody 
was turned out until the next day, when Gray came again. And the 
next day, and many next days, J. would go to Fitzroy Street and 
Whistler would say, ‘“‘ Now you must wait,” and he would wait in the 
little ante-room with Marie, and Whistler would talk away through 
the open door until J. was brought into the studio to see the finishing- 
touches added to the day’s work. This explains the beginning of 
our difficulties and the reason why our progress was not rapid. 

We have spoken of the fever of work that had taken hold of Whistler. 
He dreaded to lose a second. He was rarely willing to leave the studio 
during the day or, if he did, it was to work somewhere else, as when he | 
went to Sir Frank Short’s and, as he told us the same evening, pulled 
nineteen prints before lunch, and all the joy in it came back, but he did 
not return in the afternoon, because, “‘ well, you know, my consideration 
for others quite equals my own energy.” For himself he had no 
consideration, and his work seldom stopped. We remember one late 
afternoon during the summer, when he had asked us to come to the 
studio, finding tea on the table and Whistler at his easel. ‘‘ We must 
have tea at once or it will get cold,” he said, and went on painting. 
Ten minutes later he said again, “‘ We must have tea,” and again went 
on painting. And the tea waited for a half-hour before he could lay 
down his brushes, and then it was to place the canvas in a frame and look 
at it for another ten minutes. When an invited interruption was to him 
a hindrance, he could not but find Mr. Gray, with his huge apparatus, 
anuisance. A good many photographs, however, were made at Fitzroy 
Street, and Whistler helped to get permission for pictures to be photo- 
graphed wherever the photographing did not interfere with his work. 
In England, America, and on the Continent many pictures which had 


396 | [1900 


Tue BEGINNING OF THE END 


not been reproduced, and to which access could be obtained, were 
photographed. 

Nothing interested Whistler more this year than the Universal 
Exhibition in Paris, and he and Mr. John M. Cauldwell, the American 
Commissioner, understood each other after a first encounter. Mr. 
Cauldwell, coming to Paris to arrange the exhibition, with little time 
at his disposal and a great deal to do, wrote to ask Whistler to call on 
a certain day “at 4.30 sharp.” Whistler’s answer was that, though 
appreciating the honour of the invitation, he regretted his inability 
to meet Mr. Cauldwell, as he never had been able and never should be 
able to be anywhere “ at 4.30 sharp,” and it looked as if the unfortunate 
experience of 1889 might be repeated. But when Whistler met Mr. 
Cauldwell, when he found how much deference was shown him, when 
he saw the decoration and arrangement of the American galleries, he 
was more than willing to be represented in the American section. He 
sent L’Andalouse, the portrait of Mrs. Whibley, Brown and Gold, the 
full-length of himself, and, at the Committee’s request, The Little W hite 
Girl, never before seen in Paris. He brought together also a fine group 
of etchings, and when he learned that he was awarded a Grand Prix for 
painting and another for engraving, he was gratified and did not hesitate 
to show it. The years of waiting for the official compliment did not 
lessen his pleasure when it came. Rossetti retired from the battle at an 
early stage, but Whistler fought to the end and gloried in his victory. 
He was dining at Mr. Heinemann’s when he received the news, and they 
drank his health and crowned him with flowers, and he enjoyed it as 
fully as the fétes of his early Paris days. J. was awarded a gold medal 
for engraving, and we suggested that the occasion was one for general 
celebration, which was complete when Timothy Cole, another gold 
medallist, appeared unexpectedly as we were sitting down to dinner. 
Mr. Kennedy was one of the party, and Miss Birnie Philip came with 
Whistler, and the little dinner was the ceremony he knew how to make 
of reunions of the kind. He was pleased when he heard that his medals 
were voted unanimously and read out the first with applause. A story 
in connection with the awards, told over our table some months later 
by John Lambert returning from Paris, amused him vastly. Though 
it was agreed that the first medals should not be announced until all 
the others were awarded, the news leaked out and got into the papers. 


1900] 397 


James McNett WuIsTLeR 


At the next meeting of the jury, Carolus-Duran, always gorgeous, was 
more resplendent than ever in a flowered waistcoat. He took the 
chair, and at once, with his eye on the American jurors, said that 
there had been indiscretion. Alexander Harrison was up like a 
shot: ‘“‘ A propos des tndiscrétions, messieurs, regardez le gilet de 
Carolus!” 

During this time Whistler was paying not only for his rooms at the 
Hotel Chatham in Paris, but for one at Garlant’s Hotel, in addition to 
the apartment in the Rue du Bac where Miss Birnie Philip and her 
mother lived the greater part of the year, for the studios in the Rue 
Notre-Dame-des-Champs and Fitzroy Street, and lastly, for the ‘‘ Com- 
pany of the Butterfly” in Hinde Street. It was no light burden, 
though he had a light way of referring to his ‘ collection of chateaux 
and pieds-d-terre.” His pockets were as full as he had wanted them, 
but he could not get used to their not being empty. Once, afraid he 
could not meet one of his many bills for rent, he asked a friend to 
verify his bank account, with the result that six thousand pounds were 
found to be lying idle. 

Whistler, as a “‘ West Point man,” followed the Boer War with the 
same interest he had shown in the Spanish War. It was a “ beautiful 
war ” on the part of the Boers, for whom he had unbounded admiration. 
From Paris, through the winter, he sent us, week by week, Caran 
d’Ache’s cartoons in the Figaro. In London he cut from the papers 
despatches and leaders that reported the bravery of the Boers and the 
blunders of the British, and carried them with him wherever he went. 
His comments did not amuse the “‘ Islanders,” whom, however, he knew 
how to soothe after exasperating them almost beyond endurance. One 
evening J. walked back with him to Garlant’s, and they were having 
their whisky-and-soda in the landlady’s room while Whistler gave his 
version of the news of the day, which he thought particularly psycho- 
logical. Then suddenly, when it seemed as if the landlady could not 
stand it an instant longer, he turned and said in his most charming 
manner, ‘‘ Well, you know, you would have made a very good Boer your- 
self, madam.” As he said it, it became the most amiable. of compli- 
ments, and the evening was finished over a dish of choice peaches which 
she hoped would please him. Another evening, the Boers were on the 
point of kindling a fatal war between himself and a good friend, when a 
398 [1900 


Se en ate eee 


THE BEGINNING OF THE END 


bang of his fist on the table brought down a picture from the wall of 
our dining-room, and in the crash of glass the Boers were forgotten. No 
one who met him during the years of the war can dissociate him from 
this talk, and not to refer to it would be to give a poor idea of him. If 
he had a sympathetic audience, he went over and over the incidents of 
the struggle ; the wonder of the despatches ; Lord Roberts’ explana- 
tion that all would have gone well with the Suffolks on a certain occasion 
if they had not had a panic; Mrs. Kruger receiving the British Army 
while the Boers retired, supplied with all they wanted, though they 
went on capturing the British soldiers wholesale; General Buller’s 
announcement that he had made the enemy respect his rear. When 
he was told of despatches stating that Buller, on one occasion, had re- 
tired without losing a man, or a flag, or a cannon, he added, “‘ Yes, or a 
minute.” He repeated the answer of a man at a lecture, who, when the 
lecturer declared that the cream of the British Army had gone to South 
Africa, called out, ‘‘ Whipped cream.” The blunderings and the sur- 
renderings gave Whistler malicious joy, and he declared that as soon as 
the British soldier found he was no longer in a majority of ten to one, he 
threw up the sponge or dropped the gun. He recalled Bismarck’s say- 
ing that South Africa would prove the grave of the British Empire, and 
also that the day would come when the blundering of the British 
Army would surprise the world, and he quoted “a sort of profes- 
sional prophet ” who predicted a July that would bring destruction 
to the British: “What has July 1900 in store for the Island?” he 
would ask. 

There was no question of his interest in the Boers, but neither 
could there be that this interest was coloured by prejudice. He never 
forgot his ‘‘ years of battle”? in England, when, alone, he met the 
blunderings, mistakes, and misunderstandings of the army of artists, 
critics, and the public. In his old age, as in his youth, he loved London 
for its beauty. His friends were there, nowhere else was life so con- 
genial, and not even Paris could keep him long from London. But it 
was his boast that he was an American citizen, that on his father’s side 
he was Irish, a Highlander on his mother’s, and that there was not a drop 
of Anglo-Saxon blood in his veins. He had no affection for the people 
who persisted in their abuse and ridicule until, confronted by the 
Goupil Exhibition of 1892, they were compelled—however grudgingly— 
1900] 399 


James McNeriit WuIsTLER 


to give him his due. ‘This was one reason why he expressed the wish 
that none of his pictures should form part of an English national collec- 
tion, or remain in England, and emphasised the fact that his sitters at 
the end were American or Scotch. He conquered, but the conquest 
did not make him accept the old enemies as new friends. In the posi- 
tion of the Boers he no doubt fancied a parallel with his own when, 
alone, they defied the English, who, on the battlefield as in the apprecia- 
tion of art, blundered and misunderstood. Whistler’s ingenuity in 
seeing only what he wanted to see and in making that conform to his 
theories was extraordinary. He could not be beaten because, for him, 
right on the other side did not exist. He came nearest to it one evening 
when discussing the war, not with an Englishman, but with an American 
and an officer into the bargain, whom he met in our rooms, and who said 
that there was always blundering at the opening of a campaign, as at 
Santiago, where two divisions of the United States Army were drawn 
up so that, if they had fired, they must have shot each other down. 
It was a shock, but Whistler rallied, offered no comment, and was care- 
ful afterwards to avoid such dangerous ground. 

Prejudice coloured all his talk of the English, whose characteristics 
to him were as humorous as his were incomprehensible to them. It 
was astonishing to hear him seize upon a weak point, play with it, 
elaborate it fantastically, and then make it tell. The “ enemies ” 
suffered from his wit as he from their density. His artistic sense 
served him in satire as in everything else. One favourite subject 
was the much-vaunted English cleanliness. He evolved an elaborate 
theory : 

“‘ Paris is full of baths and always has been; you can see them, 
beautiful Louis XV. and Louis XVI. baths on the Seine; in London, 
until a few years ago, there were none except in Argyll Street, to which 
Britons came with a furtive air, afraid of being caught. And the 
French, having the habit of the bath, think and say nothing of it, 
while the British—well, they’re so astonished now they have learned 
to bathe, they can’t talk of anything but their tub.” 

The Bath Club he described as “the latest incarnation of the 
British discovery of water.” His ingenious answer was ready when 
British virtue was extolled. He repeated to us a conversation at this 
time with Madame Sarah Grand. She said it was delightful to be back 
400 7 [1900 


THE BEGINNING OF THE END 


in England after five or six weeks in France, where she had not seen 
any men, except two, and they were Germans, whom she could have 
embraced in welcome. A Frenchman never would forget that women 
are women. She liked to meet men as comrades, without thought of 
sex. Whistler told her: “ You are to be congratulated, madam— 
certainly, the Englishwoman succeeds, as no other could, in obliging 
men to forget her sex.” 

A few days after, he reported another “ happy ” answer. He was 
with three Englishmen and a German. One of the Englishmen said, 
‘The trouble is, we English are too honest ; we have always been 
stupidly honest.”” Whistler turned to the German: “ You see, it is 
now historically acknowledged that whenever there has been honesty 
in this country, there has been stupidity.” 

His ingenuity increased with the consternation it caused, and the 
“ Islander ” figured more and more in his talk. 

The excitement in China this summer interested him little less 
than affairs in South Africa. He was indignant, not with the Chinese 
for the alleged massacres at Pekin, but with Americans and Europeans 
for considering the massacres an outrage that called for redress. After 
all, the Chinese had their way of doing things, and it was better to lose 
whole armies of Europeans than to harm the smallest of beautiful things 
in that great wonderful country. He said to us one day: 

“¢ Here are these people thousands of years older in civilisation than 
us, with a religion thousands of years older than ours, and our mission- 
aries go out there and tell them who God is. It is simply preposterous, 
you know, that for what Europe and America consider a question of 
honour one blue pot should be risked.” 

Another evening when he said this to a larger audience, one of the 
party asked him if art did not always mark the decadence of a country. 
“* Well, you know,” said Whistler, “ a good many countries manage to 
go to the dogs without it.” 

The month of July in London was unusually hot, and for the first 
time we heard Whistler complain of the heat, in which, as a rule, he 
revelled, though he dressed for it at dinner in white duck trousers and 
waistcoat with his dinner-jacket, and in the street exchanged his silk 
hat for a wide-brimmed soft grey felt, or a “ dandy” straw. He was 
restless, anxious to stay in his studio, but, for the sake of Miss Birnie 
1900] 20 401 


James McNeitt WuisTLerR 


Philip and her mother, anxious to go to the country or by the sea. 
Looking from our windows, he would say that, with the river there and 
the Embankment Gardens gay with music and people, we were in no 
need to leave town, and we were sure he envied us. One day he went 
to Amersham, near London, with the idea of staying there and painting 
two landscapes somebody wanted. Mr. Wimbush took him. 

“You know, really, I can’t say that, towards twilight, it is not pretty 
in a curious way, but not really pretty after all—it’s all country, and the 
country is detestable.” 

Eventually he took a house at Sutton, near Dublin, persuaded Mrs. 
and Miss Birnie Philip to go there, and then promptly left with Mr. 
Elwell for Holland. He told Mr. Sidney Starr once that only one land- 
scape interested him, the landscape of London. But he made an 
exception of Holland. When he was reminded that there is no country 
there, he said to us: 

“That’s just why I like it—no great, full-blown, shapeless trees 
as in England, but everything neat and trim, and the trunks of the trees 
painted white, and the cows wear quilts, and it is all arranged and 
charming. And look at the skies! They talk about the blue skies of 
Italy ; the skies of Italy are not blue, they are black. You do not 
see blue skies except in Holland and here, where you get great white 
clouds, and then the spaces between are blue! And in Holland there 
is atmosphere, and that means mystery. There is mystery here, too, 
and the people don’t want it. What they like is when the east wind 
blows, when you can look across the river and count the wires in the 
canary bird’s cage on the other side.” 

He stayed a week at Domburg, a small sea-shore village near Middel- 
burg. With its little red roofs nestling among the sand-dunes and its 
wide beach under the skies he loved, he thought it enchanting, and made 
a few water-colours which he showed us afterwards in the studio. The 
place, he said, was not yet exploited, and at Madame Elout’s he found 
good wine and a Dordrecht banker who talked of the Boers and assured 
him they were all right, the Dutch would see to that. A visit to 
Ireland followed. He went full of expectations, for as the descendant 
of the Irish Whistlers he called himself an Irishman. We have a note of 
his stay there from the late Sir William Armstrong, Director of the 
National Gallery of Ireland : 

402 [1900 


eee eee in eS 


THE BEGINNING OF THE END 


“‘ He took a house, ‘ Craigie’ the name of it, at Sutton, six miles 
from Dublin, on the spit of sand which connects the Hill of Howth with 
the mainland (as the Neutral Ground unites ‘ Gib.’ with Spain) on the 
north side of Dublin Bay. There he excited the curiosity of the natives 
by at once papering up the windows on the north side of the house, 
for half their height, with brown paper. He came to dinner with me 
one night, stipulating that he should be allowed to depart at 9.30, as 
he was such an early goer to bed. We dined accordingly at 7, and his 
Jehu, with the only closed fly the northern half of County Dublin could 
supply, was punctually at the door at the hour named. There he had 
to wait for three hours, for it was not until 12.30 that the delightful 
flow of Whistler’s eloquence came to an end, and that he extracted him- 
self from the deep arm-chair which had been his pulpit for four hours 
and a half. His talk had been great, and we had confined ourselves to 
little exclamatory appreciations and gazes of wrapt adoration! I spent 
an hour or two with him in the Irish National Gallery. I found him 
there lying on the handrail before a sketch of Hogarth (George ITI. and 
his family) and declaring it was the most beautiful picture in the world. 
The only other remark on any particular picture which I can now recall 
is his saying of my own portrait by Walter Osborne, ‘ It has a skin, it has 
a skin!’ He soon grew tired’of Sutton and Ireland, and when I called 
at Craigie a few days after the dinner he had flown. He did not 
forget to send a graceful word to my wife, signed with his name and 
Butterfly.” 

He did little work during his visit. The house was on the wrong 
side of the bay, the weather was wretched, but Chester, on the way 
home, was.‘‘ charming and full of possibilities.” 

In September the frequent meetings were continued. The talk 
drifting here and there, touched upon many subjects belonging to no 
particular period, but characteristic of his moods and memories. Thus, 
one evening, when Mr. W. B. Blaikie was with us and the talk turned 
to Scotland, Whistler told stories of Carlyle. Allingham, he said, was 
for a time by way of being Carlyle’s Boswell and was always at his heels. 
They were walking in the Embankment Gardens at Chelsea, when 
Carlyle stopped suddenly : ‘‘ Have a care, mon, have a care, for ye have 
a tur-r-ruble faculty for developing into a bore!” Carlyle had been 
reading about Michael Angelo with some idea of writing his life or an 


1900] 403 


James McNeiitt WHIsTLER 


essay, but it was Michael Angelo, the engineer, who interested him. 
Another day, walking with Allingham, they passed South Kensington 
Museum. ‘ You had better go in,” Allingham said. ‘‘ Why, mon, 
only fools go in there.” Allingham explained that he would find 
sculpture by Michael Angelo, and he should know something of the 
artist’s work before writing his life. ‘* No,” said Carlyle, ‘‘ we need 
only glance at that.” 

Whistler’s talk of Howell and Tudor House overflowed with 
anecdotes of the adventurer, for whom he retained a tender regret, and 
the group gathered about Rossetti. He accounted for Howell’s down- 
fall by a last stroke of inventiveness when he procured rare, priceless 
black pots for a patron who later discovered rows of the same pots in 
an Oxford Street shop. Whistler had a special liking for the story of 
Rossetti dining at Lindsey Row, at the height of the blue and white 
craze, and becoming so excited when his fish was served on a plate he 
had never seen before that he forgot the fish and turned it over, fish and 
all, to look at the mark on the back. Another memory was of a dinner 
at Mr. Ionides’, with Rossetti a pagan, Sir Richard Burton a Moham- 
medan, Lady Burton a Catholic. They fell into a hot argument over 
religion, but Whistler said nothing. Lady Burton, who was in a state 
of exaltation, could not stand his silence: “‘ And what are you, Mr. 
Whistler ?”’ ‘I, madam,” he answered, “ why, I am an amateur! ” 
He spent many evenings drawing upon his memory of the “ droll ” and 
“joyous ” things of the past. But the past brought him back with re- 
doubled interest to the present, in which so much waited to be done. 

In October we began to notice a change, and we knew that when 
he worried there was cause. He was called to Paris once or twice about 
the school and his “‘ chateaux and pieds-d-terre.”” After one of these 
journeys he was laid up with a severe cold at Mr. Heinemann’s. In 
November he was in bed for many days at Garlant’s. He had other 
worries. British critics conspired either to ignore his success at the 
Paris Exhibition, or account for it sneeringly or lyingly. He was 
irritated when he read an article on the Exhibition, signed D. S. M., in 
the Saturday Review devoted altogether, he told us, to Manet and 
Fantin, with only a passing reference to himself : 

** Manet did very good work, of course, but then Manet was always 
Pécolier—the student with a certain sense of things in. paint, and that 
404. [1900 


¥ 


i 


i 


Bie 


sat cae 


WALTER SICKERT 
Cobden-Sanderson 


MRS. 
Mrs, 


PORTRAIT OF 


f 


10n O 


In the possess 


PORTRAIT OF MISS WOAKES 


In the possession of Messrs. Knoedler & Co. 


(See page 360) 


THE BEGINNING OF THE END 


is all !—he never understood that art is a positive science, one step in 
it leading to another. He painted, you know, in la maniére noire, the 
dark pictures that look very well when you come to them at Durand- 
Ruel’s, after wandering through rooms of screaming blues and violets 
and greens, but he was so little in earnest that midway in his career 
he took to the blues and violets and greens himself. You know, it is 
the trouble with so many; they paint in one way—brilliant colour, say 
—they see something, like Ribot, and, dear me, they think, we had 
better try to do this too, and they do and, well, really, you know, in the 
end they do nothing for themselves ! ” 

He was furious with the critic who stated that his medal was awarded 
for The Little White Girl. The statement was offensive because, he 
said, “ the critics are always passing over recent work for early master- 
pieces, though all are masterpieces ; there is no better, no worse; the 
work has always gone on, it has grown, not changed, and the pictures 
I am painting now are full of qualities they cannot understand to-day 
any better than they understood The Little White Girl at the time it 
was painted.” 

This was an argument he often used. A few evenings after, he 
told a man, who suggested that Millet’s later work was not so good 
because he was married and had to make both ends meet, ‘‘ You’re 
wrong. An artist’s work is never better, never worse ; it must be always 
good, in the end as in the beginning, if he is an artist, if it is in him to 
do anything at all. He would not be influenced by the chance of a wife 
or anything of that kind. He is always the artist.” 

He was annoyed because critics could not see a truth which to him 
was simple and obvious. His annoyance culminated when the Maga- 
zine of Art not only said the Grand Prix was awarded for The Little 
White Girl, but protested against the award, because the picture was 
painted before the ten years’ limit imposed by the French authorities, a 
protest printed in other papers. Whistler could not bear this in silence, 
for it looked like an effort to deprive him of his first high award from a 
Paris Exhibition. The attack was disgraceful. Whistler’s two other 
pictures were his most recent, and, as we have said, The Little White 
Girl was specially invited. As soon as he was well enough, he came 
to us several times, with Mr. William Webb, his solicitor, to talk the 
affair over. As a result, an apology was demanded, and made. This 
1900] 405 


James McNertt WuisTLER 


belittling of certain pictures in favour of others, with its inevitable 
inference, offended him, in the end as in the beginning. Mr. Sargent 
writes us an instance of his manner of carrying off the offence before 
the world. Somebody brought him a commission for a painting, 
stipulating that it should be ‘‘a serious work.” Whistler’s answer 
was that he “ could not break with the traditions of a lifetime.” 

Another worry he should have been spared was a dispute with one 
of the tenants at the Rue du Bac, a trivial matter which, in his nervous 
state, loomed large and made him unnecessarily miserable. The carpets 
of the lady on the floor above him were shaken out of her windows into 
his garden, and it could not be stopped. He tried the law, but was 
told he must have disinterested witnesses outside the family. If he 
engaged a detective, a month might pass before she would do it again. 
But it chanced that, while beating a carpet, it fell into his garden, and 
his servants refused to give it up. The lady went to law and his lawyer 
advised him to return the carpet. It depressed him hopelessly, and as 
he had long ceased to live in the Rue du Bac, we could not understand 
why he should have heard of so petty a domestic squabble. 

Il] and worried as he was, our work at intervals came to a standstill. 
When he felt better and stronger the talks went on, but at moments 
he seemed almost to fear that the book would prove an obituary. Once 


he said to us that we “ wanted to make an Old Master of me before my ~ 


time,” and we had too much respect and affection for him to add to his 
worries by our importunity. With the late autumn his weakness 
developed into serious illness. By the middle of November he was 
extremely anxious about himself, for his cough would not go. The 
doctor’s diagnosis, he said, was “‘ lowered in tone: probably the result 
of living in the midst of English pictures.” A sea journey was advised, 
and Tangier suggested for the winter. When he was with us he could 
not conceal his anxiety. If he sneezed, he hurried away. He fell 
asleep before dinner was over ; sometimes he could hardly keep awake 
through the evening. Once or twice he seemed to be more than 
asleep, when there was nothing to do but to rouse him, which was not 
easy, and we were extremely frightened until we could, and, indeed, 
until J. got him back to Garlant’s. He would never trust himself to 
the night air until Augustine had mixed him a hot “ grog.” Tangier 
did not appeal to him, and he asked J. to go with him to Gibraltar, 
406 ; [1900 


Pn a et See? oe eee 


a ee a ee 


In SEaRcH oF HEALTH 


stay a while at Malaga, and then come back by Madrid to see at last the 
pictures he had always wanted to see. He was hurt when J.’s work 
made it impossible for him to leave London. 

In December Whistler gave up the struggle to brave the London 
winter, and decided to sail for Gibraltar, on the way to Tangier and 
Algiers, with Mr. Birnie Philip, his brother-in-law, to take care of him. 
Sir Thomas Sutherland, Chairman of the P. & O. Company, arranged 
for every comfort on the voyage. But, as usual, there were complica- 
tions at the last moment—as usual, the fearful trouble of getting 
off from his studio. Everybody was pressed into his service and kept 
busy, all the waiters in the hotel were in attendance. The day before 
he was to start he discovered that his etching plates needed to be re- 
grounded and he sent them to J., who agreed to do what he could at 
such short notice, but warned him that there was not time to ground 
the plates properly and that very likely they would be spoiled. Whistler 
sent for them in the evening and, instead of leaving them out to dry 
until the morning, wrapped them up and packed them among the linen 
in his trunk. It was extraordinary that a man so careful about his 
work should always have wanted somebody else to ground his plates or 
prepare his canvases, or do something as important, that he should 
have done for himself, and that oftener than not he should have wanted 
it, as on this occasion, at the last moment. However, with the help 
of his friends and the waiters and his family, he was got ready in time, 
and on December 14 he started for the South. 


CHAPTER XLVI: IN SEARCH OF HEALTH. THE YEARS 
NINETEEN HUNDRED AND ONE AND NINETEEN HUNDRED 
AND TWO. 


As soon as Whistler got away from London he was unhappy. At 
Tangier the wind was icy, at Algiers it rained, and everywhere when 
it was clear the sky was “ hard” and the sea was “ black.” Snow 
was falling at Marseilles, and he was kept in his room for a couple of 
weeks, so ill he had to send for a doctor, and he was only comforted 
when he found the doctor delightful. Corsica was recommended and, 
as ‘‘Napoleon’s Island,” attracted Whistler. When he was well 
1901 | 407 


James McNeitt WHIsTLER 


enough Mr. Birnie Philip left him, and he sailed alone for Ajaccio. 
Here he stayed at the Hétel Schweizerhof. The weather at first was 
abominable, so cold and the wind so treacherous that he could not work 
out of doors, and he felt his loneliness acutely. Fortunately he made 
a friend of the Curator of the Museum, and Mr. Heinemann joined 
him for a time. They loitered about together in the quaint little 
town, went to see the house where Napoleon was born—“‘a great 
experience ’”—spent many rainy hours in the café where Mr. Heinemann 
taught him to play dominoes, a resource not only then but the rest of 
his life. They played for the price of their coffee, and Whistler cheated 
with a brilliancy that made him easily a winner, but that horrified a 
German who sometimes took a hand, though the naiveté of Whistler’s 
“system ” could not have deceived a child. 

He was by no means idle, and he brought back a series of exquisite 
pen and pencil drawings begun at Tangier. A few water-colours were 
made, and when the weather gave him a chance he worked on his 
copper-plates. He bit one or two that J. had grounded in London, 
and the ground came off. He did not know how, or did not have the 
courage to prevent it. We can only wonder again that a man who 
made such wonderful plates did not know what to do, or did not dare 
do it, in difficulties of this sort, preferring to rely upon somebody 
else. He had drawn on some of the other plates before he began to 
bite any of them, and he may have done more than have as yet been 
seen. In Mr. Howard Mansfield’s and the Grolier catalogues only 
one plate in Corsica is recorded, in both called The Bohemians. But 
as J. grounded ten or a dozen for Whistler, and as he spoke to us of 
more than one bitten, it is probable that the plates exist. ‘* All my 
dainty work lost,” he wrote to us from Corsica, and it looked as if the 
shadow had fallen upon our friendship. But he understood, and the 
shadow passed as quickly as it came. There were other schemes. One 
day, after his return, he told Mr. Clifford Addams that he had seen a 
great black-bearded shepherd, on a horse, carrying a long pole, coming 
down a hill-side, of whom he wanted to make a large equestrian portrait. 
But he never started it. He felt he was not able. 

The closing of the school in Paris occupied and worried him, and 
he was arranging for a show of pastels and prints at the Luxembourg. 
One pleasure, of which he wrote to us, came from “ new honours ” in 
408 [1901 


In SEARCH oF HEALTH 


Dresden, where he was awarded a gold medal and elected “ unanimously 
to the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts.”” He was more tired than he 
admitted in his letters, dwelling little on his fatigue, and insisting that 
the doctor in Marseilles found nothing was the matter with him. But 
he was never strong after the autumn of 1900, and earlier than this the 
doctor in London warned his friends that he was failing. 

He was more hopeful because at Ajaccio he said he had discovered 
what was the matter with him: 

* At first, though I got through little, I never went out without a 
sketch-book or an etching-plate. I was always meaning to work, always 
thinking I must. Then the Curator offered me the use of his studio. 
The first day I was there he watched me, but said nothing until the 
afternoon. Then—‘ But, Mr. Whistler, I have looked at you, I have 
been watching. You are all nerves, you do nothing. You try to, but 
you cannot settle down to it. What you need is rest—to do nothing— 
not to try to do anything.’’ And all of a sudden, you know, it struck 
me that I had never rested, that I never had done nothing, that it was 
the one thing I needed. And I put myself down to doing nothing— 
amazing, you know. No more sketch-books, no more plates. I just 
sat in the sun and slept. I was cured. You know, Joseph must sit in 
the sun and sleep. Write and tell him so.” 

He was sufficiently recovered to take his old joy in the “ Islanders,” 
into the midst of whom he fell on the P. & O. steamer coming back 
from Marseilles : 

“Nobody but English on board, and, after months of not seeing 
them, really they were amazing: there they all were at dinner, you 
know—the women in low gowns, the men in dinner jackets. They 
might look a trifle green, they might suddenly run when the ship 
rolled—but what matter? There they were—men in dinner jackets, 
stewards behind their chairs in dinner jackets—and so all’s right with 
the country! And, do you know, it made the whole business clear to 
me down there in South Africa. At home every Englishman does his 
duty—appears in his dinner jacket at the dinner hour—and so, what 
difference what the Boers are doing? Allis well with England! You 
know, you might just as well dress to ride in an omnibus!” 

Whistler returned from Corsica at the beginning of May in excellent 
spirits. He came to us on the day of his arrival. We give one small 
1901] 409 


James McNertt WHIsTLER 


incident that followed because it shows the simplicity he was careful to 
conceal from the world he liked to mystify. J. was in Italy and E., 
that afternoon, on her way back from the Continent. At our door he 
met our French maid, Augustine, starting for Charing Cross, and he 
walked with her to the station, where she was to meet E., while she 
gave him the news. Her account was that everybody stared, which 
was not surprising. He, always a conspicuous figure, was the more so 
in his long brown overcoat and round felt hat, en voyage, while she wore 
a big white apron and was en cheveux. Moreover, their conversation 
was animated. She invited him to dinner, promising him dishes which 
she knew would tempt him, and he accepted. He appeared a little 
before eight. ‘“‘ Positively shocking and no possible excuse for it,”’ he 
said, “ but, well, here I am! ” 

Work was taken up in the studio, our talks were resumed, his interest 
in the Boer War grew, the heat he had not found in the South was 
supplied by London in June and July, and from the heat he gained 
strength. He came and went, as of old, between Garlant’s Hotel and 
Buckingham Street, until he declared that the cabbies in the Strand 
knew him as well as the cabbies in Chelsea. It had ever been his boast 
that he was known to almost every cabman in London, as, indeed, he 
was. The tales of his encounters with them were numerous, for, if 
lavish in big things, he could sometimes be “ narrow ” in small, and 
his drives occasionally ended in differences. The only time we knew 
the cabby to score was one day this year, when J. was walking from 
the studio with him. “ Kibby, kibby,” Whistler cried to a passing 
cab, not seeing the “‘ fare”? inside. The cabman drew up, looked 
down at him, looked him over, and said, “‘ Where did yer buy yer ’at ? 
Go, get yer ’air cut!” and drove off at a gallop. Whistler, safe inside 
an omnibus, laughed at the adventure. 

But the summer was full of adventures. Another afternoon he 
and J. were walking in the Strand when a well-known English artist 
stopped him with, “‘ Why, my dear old Jimmie, how are you? | 
haven’t seen you or spoken to you for twenty years!” Whistler 
turned slowly to J. and said, ‘* Joseph, do you know this person ? ” 
And the person fled. ‘‘ H’m,” said Whistler, “ hasn’t spoken to me 
for twenty years—guess it will be another twenty before he dares 
again.” 

410 [1901 


In SEaRcH oF HEALTH 


We were abroad a great part of the summer of 1901, and when we 
got back his weakness had returned with the cold and the damp and 
the fog. He had realised the uselessness of keeping up his apartment 
and studio in Paris, the state of his health making it impossible for him 
to live in the one or to climb to the other, and business in connection 
with closing them took him to Paris in October. Towards the beginning 
of the month he was ill in bed at Garlant’s Hotel, and towards the end at 
Mr. Heinemann’s in Norfolk Street. When well enough to go out he 
was afraid to come to us in the evening: “ Buckingham Street at night, 
you know, a dangerous, if fascinating place!” He would not dine 
where he could not sleep, he said, ‘‘ 7’ dine, 7’y dort,” and in our small 
flat he knew there was no corner for him. Early in November he 
moved to Tallant’s Hotel, North Audley Street, and there he was very 
ill and more alarmed than ever. ‘‘ This time I am very much bowled 
over, unable to think,” he told E. when she went to see him, and, 
though he laughed, he was depressed by his landlady’s recommendation 
of his room as the one where Lord died. “I tried to make her 
understand,” he said, “‘that what I wanted was a room to livein.” He 
looked the worse because in illness, as in health, he had the faculty of 
inventing extraordinary costumes. E. remembers him there, after he 
was able to get up, in black trousers, a white silk night-shirt flowing 
loose, and a short black coat. 

Illness made Whistler more of a wanderer, and for months he was 
denied the rest he knew he needed. From Tallant’s, in November, he 
went to Mrs. Birnie Philip’s in Tite Street, Chelsea. Here he never 
asked his friends, and we saw less of him. The first week in December 
he left London for Bath, where he took rooms in one of the big Crescents, 
and where he thought he could work. There were shops in which to 
hunt for “old silver and things,” in a vague way people seemed to 
know him, and, on the whole, Bath pleased him. He lost few excuses, 
however, for coming to London, and was in town almost all of January. 
On some days he was surprisingly well. He went to the Old Masters 
Exhibition at the Royal Academy especially to see the Kingston Lacy 
Las Menifias, and he told us the same day : 

“Tt is full of things only Velasquez could have done—the heads a 
little weak perhaps—but so much, or everything, that no one else 
could have painted like that. And up in a strange place they call the 
1902] 41 


James McNett WHIsTLER 


Diploma Gallery I saw the Spanish Phillip’s copy of Las Meninas, full 
of atmosphere really, and dim understanding.” 

Ochtervelt’s Lady Standing at a Spinet interested him, suggesting 
a favourite theme : 

“The Dutchmen knew how to paint—they had respect for the 
surface of a picture; the modern painter has no respect for anything 
but his own cleverness, and he is sometimes so clever that his work is 
like that of a bad boy, and I’m not sure that he ought not to be taken 
out and whipped for it. Cleverness !—well, cleverness has nothing 
to do with art ; there can be the same sort of cleverness in painting as 
that of the popular officer who cuts an orange into fancy shapes after 
dinner.” 

He was severe on contemporary artists who forgot the standard of 
the Louvre, the only standard he recognised. Of Conder he said, 
“ [lest trop joli pour étre beau !” and of a follower of Rodin, ‘‘ He makes 
a landscape out of a man.”” When he saw Watts’ Hope his comment 
was, ‘‘ The hope that maketh the heart sick.” Watts he always called 
“ce faux Titien.” “Except in England, would anything short of 
perfection in art be praised ?” he said. ‘‘ Why approve the tolerable 
picture any more than the tolerable egg?” A sitter dissatisfied with 
his portrait told Whistler it was not good. ‘ Do you call it a good 
piece of art?’ he asked. ‘‘ Well,” said Whistler, ‘‘ do you call yourself 
a good piece of Nature ? ” 

One day a man rushed into a hat store and, as Whistler was hatless, 
being fitted, bellowed, ‘‘I say, this hat don’t fit.” ‘* Your coat don’t, 
either,”” Whistler answered. | 

One or two evenings he risked the night air to come to us and his 
talk was as gay and brilliant—reminiscent, critical, “ wicked,” as the 
mood took him, and at times serious. We remember his earnestness 
when he recalled the séances and spiritual manifestations at Rossetti’s, 
in which he believed. He could not understand the people who 
pretended to doubt the existence of another world and the hereafter. 
His faith was strong, though vague when there was question of analysing 
it. Probably he never tried to reduce it to dogma and doctrine, and, 
in that sense, he was “‘ the amateur ” he described himself in jest. If 
his inclination turned to any special creed it was to Catholicism. ‘“ The 
beauty of ritual is with the Catholics,” he said. But his work left him 
412 [1902 


In SEARCH OF HEALTH 


no time to study these problems, and his belief perhaps was stimulated 
by the mystery in which it was lost. He would have been more 
amused and interested than anybody could he have foreseen the 
messages to be received from him by an artist, and the book to be 
written by him for an author, and the portrait to be made by him 
for a medium, after his death. 

On other days London apparently was tiring him and he dozed off 
and on through his visits. He expended much energy in sending some 
old pieces of silver to the doctor at Marseilles and the Curator at 
Ajaccio, who had been kind to him. He was full of these little courtesies 
and never forgot kindness, just as he never failed to show it to those 
who appealed to him, whether it was to find a publisher for an 
unsuccessful illustrator, or a gallery for an unsuccessful painter, or even, 
as we know happened once, to support a morphomaniac for months. 

A shorter visit to town was made solely to attend a meeting of the 
International Society because his presence was particularly desired. 
This was one of the occasions that proved the sincerity and activity of 
his devotion to the Society and its affairs. It is a satisfaction that this 
devotion was appreciated and that the loyalty of the Council was not 
shaken during his lifetime. : 

In March Whistler came back to Tite Street, but, as we have said, 
he asked no one while he stayed with ‘‘ the Ladies,” his name for his 
mother- and sisters-in-law. There was one almost clandestine meeting 
with Professor Sauter, Whistler’s desire to hear about the Boers, to 
whom he “ never referred, of course, in the presence of the Ladies,” 
becoming too strong to be endured, and he could rely upon Sauter for 
sympathy and the latest news. It was an interval of mystery in the 
studio. No one was invited, few were admitted, nothing was heard of 
the work being done. Whistler liked to keep up an effect of mystery in 
his movements, but we have never known him to carry it so far as 
during the first month or so after his return from Bath. At last J. 
was summoned. Whistler would not let him come further than the 
ante-room, talking to him through the open door or the thin partition, 
but presently, probably forgetting, called him into the studio and went 
on painting, and he forgot the mystery. Whistler felt he had little 
strength and devoted that little to his work. But, even in ill-health, 
he could not live without people about him, and he soon fell back into 
1902] | 413 


James McNeiLtit WuisTLER 


his old ways. Miss Birnie Philip was now almost always in the studio 
with him. In April he showed us the portrait of Mr. Richard A. 
Canfield, whose acquaintance he made at this time, unfortunately, for 
he introduced Mr. Canfield to “‘ the Ladies,” and the introduction 
resulted in the loss of one of his friends. Miss Birnie Philip was sitting 
to him, he was working on the portrait of Miss Kinsella, the Venus, and 
the little heads, and he was adding to the series of pastels. He was 
bothered about the show of his prints and pastels which M. Bénédite 
wished to make at the Luxembourg, and he was anxious to hand over 
the details to J., who could not see to them as he was away constantly 
this year. Whistler looked forward to the show because of the official 
character it would have, though after recent purchases of pictures for 
the Luxembourg he said, ‘‘ You know, really, I told Bénédite, if this 
goes on I am afraid I must take my ‘ Mummy’ from his Hotel.” He 
was worried also about a show at the Caxton Club in Chicago, where 
it was proposed to reproduce his etchings without his permission. But 
when the Club found he objected the matter dropped. 

To avoid further wandering, for which he was no longer equal, he 
took a house in Chelsea, where he had lived almost thirty years : he had 
been absent hardly more than ten. Mrs. and Miss Birnie Philip went 
to live with him. The house, not many doors west of old Chelsea 
Church, was No. 74 Cheyne Walk, built by Mr. C. R. Ashbee, and it 
stood on the site of a fish-shop of which Whistler had made a lithograph. 
There was a spacious studio at the back in which, in his words, he re- 
turned to his ‘‘ old scheme of grey.” Its drawbacks were that it was on 
a lower level than the street, reached by a descent of two or three steps 
from the entrance hall, and that the rest of the house was sacrificed 
to it. Two flights of stairs led up to the drawing-room where, in glass 
cases running round the room, he placed his blue-and-white. The 
dining-room was on this floor, but another flight of stairs had to 
be climbed to get to the bedrooms in the garrets. Almost all the 
windows opening upon the river were placed so high, and filled with 
such small panes, that little could be seen from them of the beauty 
of the Thames and its banks so dear to Whistler. The street door 
was of beaten copper and the house was full of decorative touches, 
which, he said, “ make me wonder what I am doing here anyhow— 
the whole, you know, a successful example of the disastrous effect 
414 [1902 


Ee ee ee, Ge na a ee ee ee ee 


In SEarcH oF HEALTH 


of art upon the British middle classes.” Into this house he moved 
in April. 

He reserved his energy for his work and went out scarcely at all. He 
did not dare risk the dinner given in May by London artists to Rodin, 
who, however, breakfasted with him a day or two after. We mention 
a detail that shows how sensitive Whistler was on certain subjects. 
M. Lantéri and Mr. Tweed came with Rodin, and this is Whistler’s 
account to us later on the same day 

“It was all very charming. Rodin distinguished in every way— 
the breakfast very elegant—but—well, you know, you will understand. 
Before they came, naturally, I put my work out of sight, canvases up 
against the wall with their backs turned. And you know, never once, 
not even after breakfast, did Rodin ask to see anything, not that I 
wanted to show anything to Rodin, I needn’t tell you—but in a man 
so distinguished it seemed a want of—well, of what West Point would 
have demanded under the circumstances.” 

No doubt Rodin thought, from the careful manner in which work 
was put out of sight, that he was not expected to refer to it. His 
opinion of Whistler we know, for he wrote it to us : 

“* W bistler était un peintre dont le dessin avait beaucoup de profondeurs, 
et celles-ci furent préparées par de bonnes études, car il a di étudier assidu- 
ment. 

“ Tl sentatt la forme, non seulement comme le font les bons petntres mats 
de la maniére des bons sculpteurs. Il avait un sentiment extrémement fin, 
qui a fait crore a quelques-uns que sa base w était pas forte, mats elle étatt, 
au contratre, et forte et sure. 

“* Il comprenatt admirablement Patmosphere, et un de ses tableaux qut 
ma le plus vivement impressionné, ‘ La Tamise (barrage) a Chelsea,’ est 
merveilleux au point de vue de la profondeur de Vespace. Le paysage en 
somme n'a rien ; iln’y a que cette grande étendue d’ atmosphere, rendue avec 
un art consomme. 

“ Dauvre de Whistler ne perdra jamais par le temps ; elle gagnera ; 
car une de ses forces est Vénergie, une autre la délicatesse ; mats la princi 
pale est étude du dessin.” * 

His visits to us were on Sundays, when he came for noonday break- 
fast, alone or with Miss Birnie Philip. If possible, we had people he 


* See Appendix at end of volume. 


1902] 415 


James McNertt WHISTLER 


liked or was interested in to meet him. One Sunday the late Mrs. 
Sarah Whitman, of Boston, and Miss Tuckerman were of the party, 
and Whistler, though he arrived tired and listless, recovered his 
animation before breakfast was over, and, for the new audience, 
described again the house in which he was so astonished to find himself, 
and again summed up the Boer campaign. Once he braved the 
night and dined, June 12—the last time he dined at our table—and 
was so wonderful we forgot how ill he was. We asked Mr. and Mrs. 
Harrison Morris and Professor Sauter, and Mr. Morris brought a 
message from General Wheeler, then in London and delighted to 
have news of Whistler, whom he remembered so well in the class 
above him at West Point. To be remembered by a distinguished 
West Point man was charming, but Whistler would not hear of General 
Wheeler being in the class below him; it was the class above; for 
Whistler did not choose to be older than anybody. We have spoken 
of his prejudices. He gave that evening an instance of one of the 
strongest. Something was said of the negro; he refused to see “ any 
good in the nigger, he did not like the nigger,”” and that was the end 
of it. But Mr. Morris argued that it depended on the nigger; some 
he would be glad to invite to his house and to dinner. ‘‘ Well, you 
know,” said Whistler, “‘ I should say that depends not on the nigger, 
but on the season of the year!” This reminds us of his argument 
another evening with Mrs. T. Fisher Unwin. But the negro had 
never had a chance, Mrs. Unwin protested. ‘‘ Never had a chance! ” 
said Whistler, ‘“‘ why, there, you know, there they all were starting out 
equal—the white man, the yellow man, the brown man, the red man, 
the black man—what better chance could the black man have? If he 
got left, well, it’s because he couldn’t keep up in the race.” 

On these last visits there was another subject he could not keep 
long out of his thoughts and his talk. He had not been many days in 
his new house before building was begun by Mr. Ashbee on a vacant 
lot next door. ‘‘ It is knock, knock, knock all day,” Whistler said, and 
his resentment was unbounded. In his nervous state the perpetual 
irritation, the feeling that advantage had been taken of him and that 
he had not been informed of the nuisance beforehand, put him into a 
rage. Mr. Ashbee has written us that Whistler knew a building was 
to be put up. Those who took the house may have known, but Whistler 
416 [1902 


THE, CHELSEA GIRL 


(See page 359) 


PORTRAIT OF Ee G. KENNEDY 


In the Metropolitan Museum, New York 


(See page 335) 


In SEaRcH oF HEALTH 


told us he did not until the work began. Excitement, above all, the 
doctor said, must be avoided as it was bad for his heart. There was 
no mistaking the effect of this endless annoyance. He hoped for legal 
redress, and he referred the matter to Mr. Webb. But the knocking 
continued. On June 17 E. dined with him at Cheyne Walk, the one 
other guest Mr. Freer, recently arrived from Detroit, and it seemed to 
her as if Whistler was fast losing the good done by the winter’s rest and 
quiet. Mrs. and Miss Birnie Philip were uneasy, and it came as no 
surprise to hear a few days later that he had left the house in search of 
repose and distraction in Holland, with Mr. Freer as his companion. It 
was too late. At The Hague, where he stayed in the Hétel des Indes, 
he was dangerously ill, at death’s door. Mr. Freer remained as long as 
he could, and Miss Birnie Philip and Mrs. Whibley hurried to take care 
of him. The period was critical. There was no suggestion of it in 
the first public sign he gave of convalescence. A stupid reporter 
telegraphed from The Hague that the trouble with Whistler “ was old 
age, and it would take him a long time to get over it.”” The Morning 
Post published an article that Whistler thought had been prepared in 
anticipation of death, which, sparing him for the time, spared also the 
old wit. He wrote to beg that the “ready wreath and quick biography 
might be put back into their pigeon-hole for later use’; in reference 
to the writer’s description of him he apologised for ‘‘ continuing to 
wear my own hair and eyebrows after distinguished confréres and 
eminent persons have long ceased the habit ” ; and those who read the 
letter could not imagine that, a few days previously, his letter-writing 
seemed at anend. It contained his last word about Swinburne, and in 
it the bitterness with which he wrote Et tu, Brute /in The Gentle Art had 
disappeared. The Morning Post stated that Swinburne’s verses inspired 
The Little White Girl. Whistler explained that the lines “ were only 
written in my studio after the picture was painted. And the writing 
of them was a rare and graceful tribute from the poet to the painter—a 
noble recognition of work by the production of a nobler one.” 

After Mr. Freer had gone, Mr. Heinemann, at Whistler’s urgent 
appeal, joined him in The Hague, a fortunate circumstance, as two 
charming spinster cousins, the Misses Norman, were able to find for 
the patient comforts out of reach of a stranger. They took rooms for 
him near the Hétel des Indes, suggested a nurse, prepared dishes for 
him, and interested The Hague artists in his presence. Mesdag, 
1902] 2D 417 


James McNeitt WuistTLer 


Israels, and Van ’s Gravesande were attentive. Afterwards, Van 
’*s Gravesande wrote : 

“Je Vat beaucoup aimé. Whistler, malgré tout son quarrelling avec 
tout le monde, c’était un ‘trés bon gargon’ tout a fait charmant entre 
camarades. ‘fat passé quelques jours avec lut, 11 y déjd une vingtaine 
@années, a Dordrecht nous y avons fait des croquis, des promenades sur 
Peau, etc. etc. Fen garde toujours un excellent souvenir. On ne peut pas 
sSimaginer un compagnon plus gentil que lut, enjoué, aimable, sans aucune 
prétention, enthoustaste, et avec cela travatlleur comme pas un.” 

Whistler enjoyed the society of his doctor—‘‘ the Court Doctor, 
quite the most distinguished in Holland.” Mr. Clifford Addams came 
for a while from Dieppe, and in September E. went to Holland. 
Whistler was so much better that he made the short journey from The 
Hague to Amsterdam, where she was staying, to ask her to go with him 
to the Rijks Museum and look at the Effie Deans, which he had not seen 
in the gallery, and the Rembrandts. It is not easy for her to forgive 
the chance that took her away from the hotel before the telegram 
announcing his visit was delivered. She heard of him afterwards at 
Miiller’s book-shop, where he had been in search of old paper, for which 
they said his demand in Amsterdam had been so great and constant 
that dealers placed a fabulous price upon it. E. the next day went to 
The Hague, where she found him in rooms that in the last hours of 
packing looked bare and comfortless, for he had decided to start at once 
for London. He had promised to lunch with his doctor, so that she 
saw only enough of him to realise how frail and depressed and irritable 
illness had left him. His sisters-in-law told her that the doctor said he 
could keep well only by the greatest care and constant watchfulness, 
that he must not be excited, that he must not walk up many stairs. 

Professor Sauter was more fortunate than E., and we have his 
notes of Whistler at The Hague when, with the first cheerful days of 
his recovery, his interest in life seemed to revive : 

“¢ Realising the difficulty of conveying my vivid impressions, I have 
hesitated for so long to give you an account of our experiences with 
Whistler during the last days of August and the beginning of Septem- 
ber 1902, in Holland, soon after the severe illness which he suffered. 

* A letter which I received in the beginning of August was sufficient 
proof that he was convalescent, and that he had regained his interest 
in many affairs, and that he was enjoying The Hague and the Hotel des 
418 [1902 


In SEarcH oF HEALTH 


Indes, but also that he was longing for the society of friends from Lon- 
don. Towards the end of August our journey to Belgium and Holland 
brought us to The Hague, and of course our first visit was to him. 

““ It was indeed a pleasure to hear his gay voice, after he had received 
our card, calling down from the top of the stairs, ‘ Are you there ? Just 
wait a bit—I will be down in a moment.’ In a few minutes his thin, 
delicately dressed figure appeared, in his face delight, gay as a schoolboy 
released from school and determined to have an outing. 

“‘ He had then removed to apartments a few doors from the hotel, 
but to the latter he invited us to lunch. With intense appreciation 
Whistler spoke of the attention and consideration shown to him by the 
hotel people during his illness. All was sun, like the beautiful sunny 
warm August day, and as if to give proof of his statements about the 
cooking, management, and everything in the hotel, he ordered lunch 
with great care. 

“ He was full of gaiety, and his amusement over the obituary and 
his own reply to it was convincing enough that neither his spirit nor 
his memory had suffered. 

“¢ After lunch, Whistler insisted on taking us for a drive to show us 
the ‘charming surroundings’ of The Hague and the Bosch. We 
drove also to Scheveningen. He was full of admiration and love for 
The Hague. 

‘On the way to Scheveningen the real state of his health became 
alarmingly evident. He looked very ill and fell asleep in the carriage, 
but to my suggestion to drive home and have a rest he would not 
listen. 

* It was a glorious afternoon, and the calm sea with the little white 
breakers, the sand with hundreds of figures moving on it, and children 
playing in gay dresses, made a wonderful picture to enjoy in his 
company. 

“About 5 p.M. we brought him to his rooms after arranging to 
visit the Mauritshuis together next day. 

“‘ About 11.30 next morning we met in the gallery, and wandered 
from room to room. He was all alive and bright again, and there he 
showed particular interest in and affection for Rembrandt’s Father, and 
spoke of it as a fine example of the mental development of the artist, 
which, he said, should be continuous from work to work up to the end. 

‘I mentioned that we were going to the Vieux Doelen to lunch to 
1902] 419 


James McNeitu WuisTLeR 


meet General De Wet ; his interest in this announcement was intense, 
and I had to promise to tell him all about it in the afternoon. 

“On coming to the two portraits by Franz Hals he examined the 
work with undisguised delight, but the full disclosure of feeling towards 
the Master of Haarlem was reserved to us for the next day. 

“On my saying, ‘ We are going to Haarlem to-morrow,’ Whistler 
promptly replied, ‘ Oh, I might come along with you.’ 

“In his delicate state of health this reply was startling indeed, and 
realising the responsibility of allowing him to undertake even the small 
journey away from his rooms and doctor, I replied, “‘ But we are leaving 
bv an early train.’ ‘Oh, then I might follow later on,’ he finished. 

“‘ ‘Thus we parted, he to his rooms, we to the Vieux Doelen. 

** About 4 p.m. I went round to give him an account of my meeting 
with De Wet, which aroused the greatest curiosity, and many questions 
I had to face. 

“When I asked him whether he had seen the Generals, he said, 
‘ You see, I just drove round and left my cards on their Excellencies.’ 

** But still the journey of Haarlem occupied his mind, and before 
I left. him it came out: ‘ Well, you are going to Haarlem early to- 
morrow ? Perhaps I will see you there.’ 

“* T certainly would never have dreamt for a moment that he would 
carry out what I took for passing fancy, and intense was my astonish- 
ment when next day about noon at the Haarlem Gallery I saw Whistler 
in the doorway, smilingly looking towards me, saying, ‘Ah, I just 
wanted to see what you are doing.’ 

“‘ From this moment until we took the train at the Haarlem Sratida 
back to The Hague a nature revealed itself in its force and subtlety, 
its worship for the real and its humility before the great, combining 
the experience of age with the enthusiasm of youth. 

** Hardly could I get Whistler away for a small lunch. 

“‘'We wandered along the line from the early St. George’s Shooting 
Guild of 1616 down to the old women of 1664. 

“Certainly no collection would give stronger support to Whistler’s 
theory that a master grows in his art, from picture to picture, till the 
end, than that at Haarlem. 

‘We went through the life with Hals the people portrayed on the 
canvases, his relations with, and attitude towards, his sitters; he 
entered in his mind into the studio to examine the canvas before the 
420 [1902 


In SEarcu oF HEALTH 


picture was started and the sitters arrived, how Hals placed the men in 
the canvas in the positions appropriate to their ranks, how he divined 
the character, from the responsible colonel down to the youthful dandy 
lieutenant, and how he revelled in the colours of their garments ! 

‘“¢ As time went on Whistler’s enthusiasm increased, and even the 
distance between the railing and the picture was too great for this 
intimate discourse. All of a sudden, he crept under the railing close 
up to the picture, but lo! this pleasure could not last for long. 

“The attendant arrived and gave him in unmistakable words to 
understand that this was not the place from which to view the pictures. 

“ And Whistler crawled obediently back from his position, but not 
discouraged, saying, ‘ Wait—we will stay after they are gone,’ pointing 
to the other visitors. 

“¢ Matters were soon arranged with the courteous little chief atten- 
dant down in the hall, who, pointing to the signature in the visitors’ 
book, asked, ‘ Is dat de groote Schilder?’ (Is that the great painter ?) 
and on my confirming it, pressed his hands together, bent a little 
on one side, opened his eyes and mouth wide, and exclaimed under 
his breath, ‘Ach!’ He was a rare little man. 

** We were soon free from fellow visitors and watchful attendants, 
and no more restrictions were in the way for Whistler’s outburst of 
enthusiasm. 

“¢ We were indeed alone with Franz Hals. 

“« Now nothing could keep him away from the canvases ; particularly 
the groups of old men and women got their full share’ of appreciation. 

“He went under the railing again, turning round towards me, 
saying, ‘ Now, do get me a chair.’ And after it was pushed under the 
railing, he went on, ‘ And now, do help me on the top of it.” From 
that moment there was no holding him back. He went absolutely into 
raptures over the old women, admiring everything; his exclamation 
of joy came out now at the top of his voice, now in the most tender, 
almost caressing whisper: ‘ Look at it—just look ; look at the beautiful 
colour—the flesh—look at the white—that black—look how those 
ribbons are put in. Oh, what a swell he was—can you see it all ?—and 
the character—how he realised it.” Moving with his hand so near the 
picture as if he wanted to caress it in every detail, he screamed with 
joy: ‘Oh, I must touch it—just for the fun of it,’ and he moved 
tenderly with his fingers over the face of one of the old women. 

1902] 421 


James McNeitt WuisTLeR 


“‘ There was the real Whistler—the man, the artist, the painter— 
there was no ‘ Why drag in Velasquez ?’ spirit—but the spirit of a 
youth, full of ardour, full of plans, on the threshold of his work, oblivious 
of the achievements of a lifetime. 

“¢ He went on to analyse the picture in its detail. 

** ¢ You see, she is a grand person ’—pointing to the centre figure— 
‘ she wears a fine collar, and look at her two little black bows—she is the 
treasurer—she is the secretary—she keeps the records ’"—pointing at 
each in turn with his finger. 

“* With a fierce look in his eye, as though he would repulse an attack 
on Hals, and in contemptuous tone, he burst out, ‘ They say he was 
a drunkard, a coarse fellow; don’t you believe it—they are the coarse 
fellows. Just imagine a drunkard doing these beautiful things ! ” 

*¢¢ Just look how tenderly this mouth is put in—you must see the 
portrait of himself and his wife at the Rijks Museum. He was a 
swagger fellow. He was a cavalier—see the fine clothes he wears. 
That is a fine portrait, and his lady—she is charming, she is lovely.’ 
In time, however, the excitement proved too much for him in his 
weak state, and it was high time to take him away into the fresh air. | 
He appeared exhausted, and | feared a collapse after such emotions. 

‘“‘ During my absence in looking for a carriage he went on talking 
to Mrs. Sauter. ‘ This is what I would like to do, of course, you know, 
in my own way ’—meaning the continual progress of his work to the 
last. ‘Oh, I would have done anything for my art.’ It was a great 
relief to have him safely seated in the carriage with us. 

“‘ Once there he soon regained his spirits, and, as we had expected 
to meet Mrs. Pennell at the Gallery, but looked in vain for her, we now 
drove from hotel to hotel in search of her, and on this expedition a truly 
Whistlerian incident happened. Stopping before one of the hotels, he 
requested to see the proprietor, who appeared immediately at the side 
of the carriage, a tall, solemn-looking gentleman, with a long reddish 
beard, bowing courteously, but the gentleman could give no information 
about Mrs. Pennell’s arrival at his hotel. After minute inquiries about 
the place, Whistler turned to him, asking, ‘ Monsieur, what hotel would 
you recommend in Haarlem if you would recommend any ?’ to which 
he promptly and seriously replied, ‘ Monsieur, if I would recommend an 
hotel in Haarlem I would recommend my own.’ ‘Thank you, Mon- 
steur, thank you,’ responded Whistler, touching his hat, bowing slightly. 
422 [1902 


THe Enp 


And we drove on, soon to arrive at the hotel where we intended to take 
tea, and rest. 

*¢ Soon we were happily settled on our return journey, in a special 
compartment, which he was, in his chivalrous consideration towards 
ladies, most anxious to reserve, as he put it, ‘to make Mrs. Sauter 
comfortable—she is tired.’ 

“With it, a day full of emotions, amusement, and anxieties came to 
an end—and, as it proved to Whistler, the last pilgrimage to Franz Hals. 

“Tt needed no persuasion to keep Whistler at home after so fatiguing 
a day. 

“‘ But on our return to the hotel late the next afternoon we were 
told that he had called three times, and finally left a note asking us to 
come round in the morning and also to bring him news of Mrs. Pennell. 

*“* Monday was a féte day for Holland—the Queen’s birthday, and 
the town gay with flags and orange streamers and happy holiday crowds. 

“TI went round early to keep him company and bring him the news 
he wished for. 

“We sat at his window overlooking merry-go-rounds, little toy and 
sweet stalls, and throngs of little children in their loyal smart frocks. 

““* What a pretty sight! If I only had my water-colours here I 
could do a nice little picture,’ he remarked. 

“Dr. Bisschop had kindly arranged to take us and Mr. Bruckmann 
to the Gallery of Mesdag, and Whistler accepted an invitation to 
join us. 

There the Canalettos were of chief interest to him. Lunch at a 
café, another visit to the Mauritshuis, and tea at his rooms brought 
our stay to an end.” 


CHAPTER XLVII: THE END. THE YEARS NINETEEN 
HUNDRED AND TWO AND NINETEEN HUNDRED AND 
THREE. 


WHisTLER came back to No. 74 Cheyne Walk, to the noise of building, 
to the bedroom at the top of the house—to the conditions against 
which the doctor’s warning was emphatic. When E. saw him about 
the middle of September on her return—J. was still away—he had 
been again ill and was confined to his room. On her next visit, 
1902] 423 


James McNett WuIsTLER 


within a few days, he was in bed, but he had moved downstairs to 
a small room adjoining the studio, intended, no doubt, for a model’s 
dressing-room. In one way it was an improvement, for there were 
no stairs and his studio was close at hand whenever he had strength 
for work, but the only window looked upon the street, and the clatter 
of children and traffic was added to the builders’ knocking. 

Except in this house, we never saw him after his return from The 
Hague. At times, in the winter and spring, he was able to go out in 
a carriage, but the three flights of stairs to our flat rose between him 
and us, an insurmountable barrier. Therefore there were seldom the 
old long intimate talks, for he was not often alone in the studio. 
Miss Birnie Philip was usually with him, sometimes sitting apart with 
her knitting, and only rarely drawn into the conversation. Mrs. 
Whibley was frequently there, and before “the Ladies ” there were 
reservations, for with many things they were not to be “ troubled.” 
This involved a restraint in himself and a sensation of oppression in 
his visitors. Then there was a coming and going of models, visits 
from his doctors, his solicitor, his barber, and many other people who 
helped to distract him. His friends were devoted, encouraged by him 
and knowing he welcomed anyone from the world without ; Mr. Luke 
Tonides, oldest of all, Mrs. Whistler, Mr. Walton, who lived next door, 
Professor Sauter, Sir John Lavery, Mr. and Mrs. Addams, his appren- 
tices, Arthur Studd, his near neighbour, drifted in and out almost daily. 
He was bored when alone and unable to work, though he had of re- 
cent years developed an extraordinary passion for reading. But, as a 
matter of fact, he was hardly ever lonely, for he was surrounded as he 
liked in his studio, and yet he felt his condition and grew restless, so that 
his wish to rejoin Mr. Heinemann in “ housekeeping ” seemed natural. 

Whistler had intervals when his energy returned, and he worked 
and hoped. We knew on seeing him when he was not so well, for his 
costume of invalid remained original. He clung to a fur-lined overcoat 
worn into shabbiness. In his younger years he had objected to a 
dressing-gown as an unmanly concession ; apparently he had not out- 
grown the objection, and on his bad days this shabby worn-out overcoat 
was its substitute. Nor did the studio seem the most comfortable 
place for a man so ill as he was, It was bare, with little furniture, as 
his studios always were, and he had not used it enough to give itjthe 
air of a workshop. The whole house showed that illness was reigning 
424 [1902 


THE Enp 


there. The hall had a more unfinished, more unsettled look than 
the entrance at the Rue du Bac, and it was sometimes strewn with the 
trays and odds and ends of the sickroom. Papers and books lay on the 
floor of the drawing-room, in contrast to the blue-and-white in the cases. 
A litter of things at times covered the sideboard in the dining-room. 
Everywhere you felt the cheerlessness of a house which is not lived 
in. When we saw Whistler in his big, shabby overcoat shuffling about 
the huge studio, he struck us as so old, so feeble and fragile that we 
could imagine no sadder or more tragic figure. It was the more tragic 
because he had always been such a dandy, a word he would have been 
the first to use in reference to himself. We recall his horror once 
when he heard a story that represented him as untidy and slovenly. 
“‘T!” he said, “ I, when if I had only an old rag to cover me I would 
wear it with such neatness and propriety and the utmost distinction ! ” 
But no one would have suspected the dandy in this forlorn little old 
man, wrapped in a worn overcoat, hardly able to walk. On his bad 
days there was not much walking about, and he lay stretched on an 
easy chair, talking little, barely listening, and dozing. His nights were 
often sleepless—he had lost the habit of sleep, he told us, and as the day 
went on he became so drowsy that it seemed as if nothing could rouse 
him from what was more like death than sleep. Sometimes, sitting by 
the table where tea was served, he would drop his forehead on the edge 
of the table, fall asleep, and remain motionless for an hour and more. A 
pretty little cat, brown and gold and white, that lived in the studio, was 
often curled up on his lap, sleeping too. His devotion to her was 
something to remember, and we have seen him get up, when probably 
he would not have stirred for any human being, just to empty the 
stale milk from her saucer and fill it up with fresh. A message was 
sent to E., one day, to announce the birth of her first kittens, that also 
made the studio their home and became a source of mild distraction 
to the invalid. 

On his good days he liked to play dominoes after tea and he cheated 
with his accustomed tricks. He often kept J. for a game and sometimes 
for dinner with himself and Miss Birnie Philip in the studio, the climb 
to the dining-room out of the question. There were times when he 
would say he never could get back to work again, but others when he 
managed to work with not only the old vigour, but the old mastery. He 
had an Irish model, Miss Dorothy Seton, whose red hair was remarkably 
1902] 425 


James McNertit WuisTLer 


beautiful and whose face Whistler thought as remarkable, for it re- 
minded him of Hogarth’s Shrimp Girl. One afternoon J. found him 
painting her, her red hair hanging over her shoulders and an apple in her 
hand, the picture to which the title Daughter of Eve was eventually 
given. He was walking up and down the studio in delight, looking al- 
most strong, and he seized J. by the arm in the old fashion and walked 
him up and down too. ‘ Well, Joseph, how long do you think it took 
me to paint that, now ? ” and not for weeks had he shown such anima- 
tion as when he added, “ It was done in a couple of hours this very 
morning.” So far as we know, it was the last important picture he 
painted, and it was, as J. then saw it, the finest thing of his latest period. 
He must have painted on it again, for at the Paris Memorial Exhibition 
the bloom of its beauty had faded. Now and then he worked on a por- 
trait of Miss Birnie Philip, and he was anxious to continue the portrait, 
started a year or so before, of Mrs. Heinemann, which needed only a 
few more sittings, but, to the world’s loss, these could not be arranged. 
He saw to cleaning the Rosa Corder, which Mr. Canfield, who was back 
in London and buying pictures, drawings, and prints in the studio, 
bought this winter for two thousand pounds from Mr. Graham Robert- 
son. The story of this purchase was the only amusing thing we 
ever heard Mr. Canfield say: ‘“‘ Offered the young fellow a thousand 
pounds—wouldn’t hear of it. Offered him two—jumped at it. Why, 
the darned fool, if he had held on he could have had five!’ Whistler 
telegraphed for us to come and look at Rosa Corder for the last time in 
England, “to m ke your adieux to her before her departure for 
America.” When E.—J. again away—arrived at the studio, he was 
better than since his return from The Hague. He had slept eight 
hours and a half the night before, and he rejoiced in not being 
sleepy. He wiped the canvas here and there tenderly with a silk 
handkerchief and kept turning round to ask triumphantly, “ Isn’t 
she beautiful ? ” 

Mr. Canfield was sitting again for his portrait, and was always 
welcome, not merely as a sitter, but as a friend. He seemed to have 
hypnotised Whistler, whom we heard say that Canfield was the only 
man who had never made a mistake in the studio. We could not help 
regretting this because of Canfield’s notorious reputation in New York, 
and the unpleasant things said of Whistler’s tolerance of the man. 
Whistler had been warned, but had sacrificed a friendship of years in 
426 [1902-3 


el hl nn 


Tue Enp 


his indignation at “a breath of scandal ” against anyone whom he had 
introduced to “the Ladies.” In the early part of 1903 we received 
numerous letters and telegrams from correspondents of American 
papers in London re-echoing the question in the New York dailies, 
“Is Whistler painting gambler Canfield?” The fact that Canfield 
was much desired at home made the New York papers of the yellowest 
sort, like the British respectable ones, eager for details, and all sorts and 
conditions of male and female reporters haunted our stairs. They 
were a terrible nuisance, and we remember in particular the youth who 
came with the usual question, “ Is Whistler painting the gambler ? ” 
and who, on J.’s reply that he had better go and ask the painter, said 
“ But they tell me Whistler would either horsewhip me or kick me out 
of the house. What do you think?” J.’s answer was that he had 
better go and see. Whistler’s condition rendered any remark which 
might excite him dangerous, and everybody hesitated to suggest that 
Canfield was a very public character to include in one’s private circle. 
Canfield’s visits did not cease, and the fact that reconciled us to his 
presence was that it resulted in one of Whistler’s masterpieces. The 
portrait, His Reverence, ranked then with The Master Smith of Lyme 
Regis. But this was our estimate when we saw the picture in Whistler’s 
studio. Later it was simply ruined, for he worked on it too. 

Whistler often saw dealers who came for his prints. On two 
memorable afternoons Mr. David Kennedy brought the large 
MacGeorge Collection of Whistler’s etchings, which he had purchased 
in Glasgow, for Whistler to look over, and, in some cases, we believe, to 
sign them. He went through as many as he could, commenting on 
their state and their preservation. There were some he had not seen 
for years, and Mr. Ionides, who was present on one of the afternoons, 
seemed to know more about them than Whistler. He soon tired, and 
was not to be revived by the bottle of American cocktails which 
Mr. Kennedy, to his complete approval, also brought. Several times 
we found him going through the accumulation of “‘ charming things ” 
from the studio in the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. Many he did 
not think so charming were, we understand, destroyed by him. So 
Miss Birnie Philip maintains, and Mr. Lavery told us that he was 
calling at Cheyne Walk one afternoon when Whistler said he had been 
burning things. We are unable to state if a reliable list was made of 
what was destroyed and what was kept. Some days Whistler read us 
1902-3] 427 


James McNerty WuisTLER 


parts of his earlier correspondence—the ‘‘ wonderful letters ” to the 


Fine Art Society during the Venetian period. And once, tired though 
he was, he insisted on reading to E. just once more his letter to a dealer, 
who had threatened him with a writ and whom he warned of the 
appearance he would make, “ with one hand presenting a Sir Joshua 
to the nation, with the other serving a writ on Whistler. Well indeed 
is it that the right hand knows not always what the left hand doeth.” 

In November he sent the Little Cardinal, which had been at the 
Salon the previous summer, to the Portrait Painters’ Exhibition. 
Several critics spoke of it as a work already seen, giving the impression, 
he thought, that it dated back many years. He wrote to the Standard 
to contradict this impression, Wedmore again having blundered. We 
called to see him on the afternoon the letter was written, and he was in 
great glee. He said: 

“ The letter is one of my best. I described Wedmore as Podsnap— 
an inspiration, isn’t it ? With the discovery of Podsnap in art criticism 
I almost feel the thump of Newton’s apple on my head, and this I have 
said. Heinemann promises to take it himself to the editor of the 
Standard, and really the whole thing has such a flavour of intrigue that 
I do believe it has made me well again! ” 

He planned to publish the criticism, his letter, the answers, and his 
final comments in a brown-covered pamphlet, a scheme begun but, 
owing to his feeble health, never carried out. To an exhibition of old 
silver at the Fine Art Society’s he lent many of his finest pieces and 
insisted upon their being shown together in a case apart, and arranged 
according to his instructions. His silver, like everything belonging to 
him, was a proof of his exquisite taste and faultless judgment. It was 
chosen, not for historic interest, nor for rarity, but for elegance of form 
and simplicity of ornament. The other collections in the exhibition 
were set out on red velvet ; his, with which he sent some of his blue-and- 
white china, was placed on his simple white table linen marked with 
the Butterfly. After we had been to the exhibition, he asked us for 
every detail : | 

“‘ How did the white, the beautiful napkins look? Didn’t the 
slight hint of blue in the Japanese stand and the few perfect plates tell ? 
Didn’t the other cases seem vulgar in comparison ? and didn’t the 


simplicity of my silver, evidently for use and cared for, make the rest | 


look like museum specimens ? ” 
428 [1902-3 


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He examined the catalogue, found fault with it because the 
McNeill, of which he was so proud, was misspelt, and he could not 
understand why there were comparatively fewer entries and shorter 
descriptions of his case than of others where history supplied an 
elaborate text. 

Notwithstanding his state, he forgot none of the old courtesies. 
When, in November, Sir James Guthrie was elected to the Presidency 
of the Royal Scottish Academy, he telegraphed his congratulations, and 
was repaid by his pleasure when Guthrie, still a member of the Council 
of the International, telegraphed back, ‘‘ Warmest thanks, my Presi- 
dent.” On New Year’s Day (1903) we received the card of good 
wishes it was his custom to send to his friends—a visiting-card with 
greetings written by himself and signed with the Butterfly. Though 
he could not go to the meetings of the International, the business done 
at each had to be immediately reported, and when the annual dinner 
was given he considered every detail, even to the point of revising the 
menu and sending special directions for the salad. He had great 
pleasure in the degree of LL.D. conferred upon him by Glasgow 
University, at the suggestion of Sir James Guthrie and Professor 
Walter Raleigh. Dr. D. S. MacColl, at their request, we believe, and 
after consulting J., approached him first to make sure that the honour 
would be accepted. There was a gleam of the old “ wickedness ” 
when Dr. MacColl called. Whistler appointed a Sunday, asking him 
to lunch, but when he arrived at the appointed hour he was sent 
upstairs to the unused drawing-room and supplied with Reynolds’, a 
Radical sheet adored by Whistler because of its wholesale abuse of the 
“Islander.” And Whistler said: ‘ When at last he was summoned to 
the studio, I told him it was the paper that of course he always wanted 
to read at the Club, but was ashamed to be seen with! And all through 
lunch I had nothing to say of art—I talked of nothing except West 
Point.” 

However, when MacColl had a chance to explain why he came, 
Whistler expressed his pleasure in receiving the degree. We recall his 
pains with his letter of acknowledgment after the official announcement 
came in March, his concern for the correct word and the well-turned 
phrase, his anxiety that there should be no mistake in the Principal’s 
title and honorary initials. It illustrates his care for detail if we add 
that, before writing the address, he sent a note, submitting it, next 
1902-3] 429 


James McNeritit WHIsTLER 


door, to Mr. and Mrs. Walton, who were Scotch, he said, and would 
know. Another pleasure came from the deference shown him by the 
Art Department of the Universal Exposition of 1904 at St. Louis. Early 
in 1903 Professor Halsey C. Ives, Chief of the Art Department, was in 
London, and went with J. to call on Whistler and to ask him to serve as 
Chairman of the Committee, of which Sargent, Abbey, and J. were 
members, for the selection of work by American artists in England. The 
invitation was a formal recognition of Whistler’s position, and he 
accepted, though he did not live to occupy the post. 

These months were not without worries. News of books about 
him, in preparation or recently published, annoyed him, as he had 
hoped to prevent such enterprises by giving us his authority for the 
work to which his illness was a serious interruption. We called one 
afternoon when he was worrying himself into a fever over the latest 
attempt of which he had heard, and was unable to think or talk of 
anything except the insolence of people who undertook to write about 
him and prepare a biography without consulting him and his wishes. 
As he talked he complained of pains in his back, and his restlessness 
was distressing to see. Another afternoon, he was, on the contrary, 
chuckling over Mr. Elbert Hubbard’s Whistler in the Little Fourneys 
series. He read us passages : 

** Really with this book I can be amused—I have to laugh. I don’t 
know how many people have taken my name in print, and, you know, 
usually I am furious. But the intimate tone of this is something quite 
new. What would my dear Mummy—don’t you know, as you see her 
with her folded hands at the Luxembourg—have said to this story 
of my father’s courtship ? And our stay in Russia—our arrival in 
London—why, the account of my mother and me coming to Chelsea 
and finding lodgings makes you almost see us—wanderers— 
bundles at the end of long sticks over our shoulders—arriving 
footsore and weary at the hour of sunset. Amazing !—it would 
be worth while, you know, to describe, not the book, but the effect 
on me reading it.” 

He was looking desperately ill the day he told us that Montesquiou 
had sold his portrait, and he was not consoled by the fact that Mr. 
Canfield was the purchaser, so that it would remain, for the present 
at least, in America. He was the more hurt because Montesquiou was 
430 [1903 


Tue Enp 


a friend and, “ as you know, the descendant of a long distinguished line 
of French noblemen.” 

There were unnecessary worries. Mr. Freer sent some of Whistler’s 
pictures to the Winter Exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of 
Fine Arts in Philadelphia. The jury awarded him the Academy’s 
Gold Medal of Honour, and, to assure to the pictures the place of 
greatest distinction where they would look best, hung them before 
anything was installed, building up a screen for them in the most 
important room, and beginning the numbers in the catalogue with 
them. For some reason Mr. Freer did not approve of the hanging and 
seems to have misunderstood the motives for it. The secretary, 
Mr. Harrison Morris, could make no change. As the incident was 
reported to Whistler he fancied a slight in the arrangement which was 
meant to do him honour. A similar incident occurred in the Spring 
Exhibition of the Society of American Artists in New York, where, also, 
Mr. Freer objected to the place chosen for Whistler’s work. Whistler, 
as a result, was disturbed by the idea that American artists were treating 
him with indifference or contempt, though this was at the time when 
their acceptance of him as master was complete and their eagerness to 
proclaim it great. Whistler went so far as to say that he never 
wished work of his to hang again in the Pennsylvania Academy, and in 
regard to the New York Exhibition he wrote protesting to the New 
York papers. The agitation and excitement did him no good, and in 
his weakness such small worries were magnified into grave troubles. It 
is the more to be regretted because, on all sides, in America he was 
honoured. The fault was Mr. Freer’s inability to understand artistic 
matters. Mr. Will H. Low and other artists tried as well as they 
could to explain things to Whistler, but Mr. Freer succeeded in pre- 
judicing him to the day of his death against the Pennsylvania 
Academy, which had done more than any other American art insti- 
tution to show its appreciation. Americans may have been slow in 
acknowledging him officially, but that was because they knew little of 
his work. They began to make amends long before his death, and 
their eagerness to possess his work may be contrasted to the indifference 
in England or in Germany, where it is said a Whistler was bought for 
Berlin by Dr. Bode for two thousand pounds, but was returned to the 
dealers by the Emperor’s command. The Sarasate had been purchased 
1903] 431 


James McNeiitt WHuIsTLER 


for the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh in November 1896, the first 
picture, Mr. Beattie, the Director, tells us, bought for the gallery, and 
we believe the first Whistler bought for any American gallery. It is 
prized as one of the most important works in the collection, and, though 
it cost the Institute five thousand dollars, was insured for thirty thou- 
sand when it went to the Rome Exhibition in the spring of 1911. We 
were sorry when last in Pittsburgh to see that it is cracking. The Yr ellow 
Buskin was in the Wilstach Collection, Philadelphia, and The Master 
Smith and The Little Rose of Lyme Regis in the Boston Museum of Fine 
Arts before 1903, and hardly an American collector of note was not 
seeking to include Whistlers in his collection. Now the Chicago 
Institute has Southampton Water and the Metropolitan in New York 
has the Irving, Connie Gilchrist, Cremorne Gardens, and several impor- 
tant studies, and has purchased from M. Duret his own large portrait 
and been presented by Mr. E. G. Kennedy with his small one. M. 
Duret parted with his because he felt he was growing old. He had had 
_ many offers from private collectors, but he wished to know the painting 
was safe in a museum. Two great masters had painted him, Manet 
and Whistler, he said to us shortly after the sale, and both portraits are 
now in public g lleries. The Fur Facket is at Worcester, and in the 
Brooklyn Institute is the very unfinished and unsatisfactory commence- 
ment of Florence Leyland. The Lange Leizen is in the Johnson Collec- 
tion, Philadelphia. The Avery collection of etchings is in the New 
York Public Library, and Charles L. Freer has donated to the National 
Gallery at Washington his entire collection, the largest in the world, 
while we have given our collection of Whistleriana to the Library of 
Congress ; the best possible refutation to the nonsense talked about 
want of appreciation by many self-styled critics, several of whom have 
been imported into America and England since Whistler’s death. 
Whistler’s health varied so during the winter that we were often 
encouraged to hope. But with the spring hope lessened with every 
visit. To consult our notes is to realise, more fully than at the time, 
how surely the end was approaching. The afternoons of sleep increased 
with the increasing weakness of his heart. He could not shake off the 
influenza cold which was dragging him down, and he lived in constant 
fear of infection from others if anybody even sneezed in his presence. 
“T can’t risk any more microbes—I’ve about enough of my own.” At 
432 [1903 


Tue Enp 


times his cough was so bad that he was afraid to talk, and he would 
write what he wanted to say; it was his tonsils, he explained. There 
were visits when, from the moment we came until we left, he worried, 
first because the windows were open, then because they were shut, and 
his impatience if the doctor’s visit was delayed would have exhausted 
a stronger man. J. dined with him on May 14, when there was a 
rekindling of gaiety. He showed the portrait of Mr. Canfield; he 
played dominoes for hours; at dinner, when a gooseberry tart was 
served, he apologised for the “‘ Island.” But after this there was no 
more gaiety for us torecord. A few days later J. went abroad for several 
weeks, and Mr. Heinemann sailed for America. When he said good-bye 
to Whistler he was entrusted with innumerable commissions. He was 
to find out the truth concerning the treatment of Whistler’s pictures 
in Philadelphia and New York, to discover who his new unauthorised 
biographers were, what artists and literary people were saying, what 
dealers were doing, and, when he returned, then they would “ keep 
house together again.” This was the moment when Mr. Heinemann 
took another flat, with the identical arrangements of the first, in 
Whitehall Court, so that they could go back to the old life. But before 
he returned the end had come. 

Fortunately, while Mr. Heinemann and J. were away, Mr. Freer 
arrived in London on his annual visit, and he was free to devote himself 
to Whistler, whom he drove out whenever Whistler had the strength. 
But this was not for long, and with her visit to him on July 1 E. gave 
up hope. He was in bed, but hearing that she was there, he sent for 
her. There was a vague look in his eyes, as if the old fires were burnt 
out. He seemed in a stupor and spoke only twice with difficulty. 
Miss Birnie Philip referred to his want of appetite and the turtle soup 
ordered by the doctor, which they got from the correct place in the 
City. “ Shocking! shocking!” Whistler broke in slowly, and then 
after a minute or two, ‘ You know, now we are all in the City!” 
Miss Birnie Philip wanted to give tea to E., who, seeing how ill he was, 
thought it wiser not to stay, and after some ten minutes said good-bye. 
** No wonder,” Whistler murmured, “‘ you go from a house where they 
don’t give you anything to eat.” E.’s next visit was on the 6th. The 
doctor had been with him, he was up, dressed, and had been out for a 
drive. But he looked worse, his eyes vaguer, giving the impression of 
1903] 2E 433 


James McNeitt WuIsTLER . 


amaninastupor. He said not a word until she was leaving, and then 
his one remark was, “‘ You are looking very nice.” 

Reports of his feebleness were brought to us by many, among others 
by M. Duret. In July he came to London, and was deeply moved by 
the condition in which he found Whistler, who, he thought, wanted to 
say things when alone in the studio with him, but the day of his first 
visit could not utter a word. And after a second visit, after an hour 
with Whistler, who again struggled to talk and could not, Duret felt it 
was the last time he would see Whistler. It was, and in his sorrow he 
could but recall the days together gone for ever. 

On the 14th E. called again, and again Whistler was dressed and in 
the studio, and there were pictures on the easels. He seemed better, 
though his face was sunken and in his eyes was that terrible vagueness. 
Now he talked, and a touch of gallantry was in his greeting, “ I wish I 
felt as well as you look.” He asked about Henley, the news of whose 
death had come a day or two before. He watched the little mother 
cat as she ran about the studio. There was a return of vigour in his 
voice when Miss Birnie Philip brought him a cup of chicken broth and 
he cried, “ Take the damned thing away,” and his old charm was in 
the apology that followed, but, he said, if he ate every half-hour or so 
as the doctor wanted, how could he be expected to have an appetite for 
dinner? He dozed a little, but woke up quickly with a show of interest 
in everything, and when, on the arrival of Mr. Lavery, E. got up to go, 
fearing that more than one visitor would tire him, he asked “‘ But why 
do you go so soon ? ” and these were the last words he ever spoke to her. 

When J. returned to town, on Friday the 17th, he immediately 
started for Chelsea, but met Mr. T. R. Way, who had been lunching 
with Mr. Freer at the Carlton, and from whom he learnt that Whistler 
and Mr. Freer were to go for a drive. 

There was no drive that afternoon—no drive ever again. The 
illness had been long, the end was swift. Whistler was dying before 
Mr. Freer reached the house. On Thursday he had seemed much 
better, had gone for a drive, and was so well at dinner that Mrs. Whibley 
told him laughingly he would soon again be dressing to dine. But 
after lunch on Friday she was called hurriedly to the studio, where 
Miss Birnie Philip was already. They realised the seriousness of the 
attack. The doctor was sent for, but the need for him had passed. 
434 [1908 


Tue Enp 


The papers during the next few days showed how Whistler’s fame 
had grown. We saw another side which the public could not see—the 
affection in which he was held by those who knew him intimately. Many 
came to us at once: M. Duret, who had lost the last of his old com- 
rades—first Manet, then Zola, and now Whistler, with whom the best 
hours of his life were spent; Mr. Kennedy, whose business relations 
with Whistler had developed into warm friendship ; Sir John Lavery, 
Professor Sauter, Mr. Harry Wilson, their one thought to express their 
love and reverence for their President. Other artists followed, others 
wrote, and our sorrow for the friend was tempered by knowing how 
deep and widespread was the regret for the master. Mr. Heinemann 
returned from New York too late to see Whistler again, and both he 
and J. were spared the sad memory of Whistler with the life faded 
from his face, the light gone from his eyes. 

The funeral took place on Wednesday, July 22. The service was 
held in old Chelsea Church, to which he had so often walked with his 
mother from Lindsey Row. There was a comparatively small attend- 
ance. The members of his own family who came were his sister-in-law, 
Mrs. William Whistler, and his nieces, Mrs. Thynne and Mrs. Réveillon. 
The Society with which, in his last years, he had identified his interests 
was represented by the Council: Professor Sauter, Mr. Harry Wilson, 
Mr. Francis Howard, Mr. Ludovici, Mr. Stirling Lee, Mr. Neven 
du Mont, Mr. E. A. Walton, and J. Here and there were friends, 
Mr. Alan S. Cole, Mr. Heinemann, Mrs. Edwin A. Abbey, Dr. Chalmers 
Mitchell, Mr. W. C. Alexander, Mr. Clifford Addams, Mr. Jonathan 
Sturgis ; and here and there Academicians, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema 
and Sir Alfred East. But Whistler, who valued official recognition, 
was given none. No one from the American Embassy paid the last 
tribute of respect to the most distinguished American citizen who ever 
lived in London. No one from the French Embassy attended the 
funeral of the Officer of the Legion of Honour. No one from the 
German Embassy joined in the last rites of the member of two 
German Royal Academies and the Knight of the Order of St. 
Michael of Bavaria. Nor was anyone present from the Italian 
Embassy, though Whistler was Commander of the Crown of Italy 
and member of the Academy of St. Luke. The only body 
officially represented besides the International was the Royal 


1903] | 435 


James McNerri WuisTLER 


Scottish Academy. The police came to restrain the crowd, but 
there was no crowd. 

The coffin was carried the short distance from the house to the 
church along the shores of the river he made his own. It was covered 
with a purple pall, upon which lay a wreath of gold laurel leaves sent 
by his Society. The pall-bearers were M. Théodore Duret, Sir James 
Guthrie, Sir John Lavery, Edwin A. Abbey, George Vanderbilt, and 
Mr. Charles L. Freer. The little funeral procession that walked with 
the coffin from the house to the church included Miss Birnie Philip, 
Mrs. Charles Whibley, their sisters, brother, and nephews, Mr. William 
Webb, and Arthur Studd, but none of his own family, none of the 
group with whom he had been most intimate in his last years. After 
the burial service was read, the procession re-formed, and the family, 
the Council of the International, and a few friends went to the grave- 
yard at Chiswick. It was a grey, stormy summer day, and as the 
clergyman said the last prayers, and the coffin was lowered, the thick 
London atmosphere wrapped the green enclosure in the magic and 
mystery that Whistler was the first to see and to reveal. The grave 
was made by the side of his wife under a wall covered with clematis. 
A tomb designed by his stepson, E. Godwin, now covers the little 
plot of ground where Whistler, the greatest artist and most striking 
personality of the nineteenth century, lies at rest in a remote corner 
of the London he loved, not far from the house, and nearer the grave, 
of Hogarth, who had been to him the greatest English master from 
the days of his boyhood in St. Petersburg. 


THE END OF THE LIFE OF JAMES ABBOTT McNEILL 
WHISTLER. HIS NAME AND HIS FAME WILL LIVE FOR 
EVER. JOSEPH PENNELL. ELIZABETH ROBINS PENNELL 


PRINTED AT THE WHITEFRIARS PRESS 


APPENDIX 


Pace 291, line 29.—“ When you ask me to say something about the 
illustrious and lamented Whistler, you do not, of course, want me to 
add my contribution to the rich pyramid of admiration and praise 
that has already been raised to his glory. 

“What you must, of course, be thinking of, is anything special and 
picturesque that I may be able to add to your biography of the great 
artist. 

“ Well as I knew and loved his works, I had but a passing glimpse 
of his person. 

“‘ Here are two interesting traits connected with it. 

“‘ Some few years ago, he was very much disturbed about a piracy 
committed in Belgium by a foreigner living at Antwerp, of his curious 
book, The Gentle Art of Making Enemies. One day he appeared in my 
study, and said to me with a sarcastic smile: ‘I should like you to be 
my counsel in this little affair, because I have been told that you, like 
myself, practise the gentle art of making enemies.’ 

“‘The case was won at Antwerp with the collaboration of my 
confrére, M. Maeterlinck, a relative of the poet who is such an honour 
to our country. The victory was celebrated at his house. When 
Whistler, the hero of the festivity, arrived at this hospitable abode, he 
was a longtime in theante-room. The maid who had let him in came, 
very much amazed, to the drawing-room where we were awaiting him, 
and said in Flemish : ‘ Madame, there is an actor in the ante-room ; he 
is doing his hair before the looking-glass, he is putting on pomade, 
painting and powdering his face.’ After a long interval, Whistler 
appeared, courteous, correct, waxed and anointed, resplendent as the 
butterfly which his name recalls, and with which he signed some of the 
notes he used to write to his counsel. 

“ This is all I can offer you. 

**T have asked M. Maeterlinck for any documents connected with 


437 


APPENDIX 


this episode he might have. All his researches have been in vain. 
Although so many insignificant papers have been preserved, Fate the 
perverse has allowed these precious fragments to disappear.” 


Page 415, line 6.—‘‘ Whistler was a painter whose drawing had 
great depth, and this was prepared for by good studies, for he must 
have studied assiduously. 

“ His feeling for form was not only that of a good painter, it was 
that of a sculptor. He had an extraordinary delicacy of sentiment, 
which made some people think that his basis was not very strong, 
whereas it was, on the contrary, both strong and firm. 

“‘ He understood atmosphere most admirably, and one of his pictures 
which made a very deep impression on me, The Thames at Chelsea, is a 
marvel of depth and space. The landscape in itself is nothing; there 
is merely this great extent of atmosphere, rendered with consummate 
art. 

“ Whistler’s art will lose nothing by the lapse of time ; it will gain ; 
for one of its qualities is energy, another is delicacy ; but the greatest 
of all is its mastery of drawing.” 


438 


INDEX 


ABBEY, E. A., 139, 309, 321, 430, 435, 
436 
Abbey, Mrs., 139, 435 
Abbot, Gen. H. L., 24 
Abbott, Jas., I 
Académie Carmen, 35, 377-92 
Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts, 409 
Adam and Eve, Old Chelsea, 156, 197 
Adam houses, Adelphi, 160-61 
Addams, Clifford, 77, 360, 408, 418, 
424, 435 
Addams, Mrs. (Miss Inez Bate), 114, 
359, 360, 367, 378, 383-86, 424 
“* Albemarle, The,’’ 279, 311 
Alderney Street, 275 
Alexander, Cicely H. 
Rice), 99, 119-24 
Portrait of (Grey and Green), 53, 
89, 106, 121-24, 131, 146, 208, 
299, 375 
Alexander, John W., 231, 232, 321 
Alexander, May, Portrait of, 89, 124 
Alexander, W. C., 121, 147, 157, 159, 
239, 301, 435 
Alexander, Mrs. W. C., 121, 124 
Alexandre, Arséne, 315, 320 
Allen, Sir William, 8—9 
Allingham, W., 120, 403 
Alma-Tadema, Sir Lawrence, 56, 58, 
153, 154, 252, 253, 435 
Alone with the Tide, See Coast of Brittany 
Aman-Jean, E., 320 
Américaine, L’, 158-59, 208 
American Art Association, Paris, 321 
American Artists, Society of, 209, 


(Mrs. Spring- 


431 
Amsterdam from the Tolhuis, 74, 80 
Amsterdam, Rijks Museum, 280, 418, 


422 
Anacapa Island, 32 
Andalouse, L’ (see Mrs. C. Whibley), 
326, 397 
Angel Inn, Cherry Gardens, 63 
Angelo, Michael, 364, 403 
the Sistine Chapel, 184 


Annabel Lee, 280 

Ararat, Mount, 184, 188 

Argyll, Duke of, 308 

Armitage, Mrs., 377 

Armstrong, Thomas, 35-37, 47, 48, 55, 
60-61, 168, 170 

Armstrong, Sir W., 255, 402 

“Art and Art Critics,’ Whistler v. 
Ruskin, 26, 180, 185, 245 

Art Institute, Chicago, 283 

“ Art Journal,’”’ 103, 116, 235, 240, 255, 


326 
Art, L’, 180 
“ Art Notes,” 157, 267 
Art Union, 263 
Artiste, L’,’’ 93, 94 
Artists, Society of, 375 
Arts Club, 141, 155, 302 
Ashbee, C. R., 414, 416 
Astor, W. W., 286 
Astruc, Z., 49 
Portrait of, 58 
““ Atheneum, The,’’ 59, 67, 69-70, 91, 
93, 102, 127, 144, 154, 156, 159, 288 
Au Sixiéme, 50 
Aubert, M., 37 
Augustine (Mme. Bertin), 343, 408 
Authors, Society of, 281 
Autotype Company, The, 157 
Avery, 5. P., 99, 100, 210, 432 
Axenfeld, M., 49 
Portrait of, 65 


BaAcHER, Otto H., 118, 190, IgI, 192, 
193, 194, 196, 199, 200, 202, 206, 231 

Balcony, By the, 332 

Balcony, The (Flesh-Colour and Green), 
86, 87,. 109, 276, 287, 332 

Balestier, Wolcott, 287 

Balleroy, De, 91 

Baltimore, I, 26, 27 

Bankes, Eldon, 348 

Barbizon, excursion to, 318 

Barnett, Canon and Mrs., 335 


+39 


INDEX 


“ Baronet and the Butterfly, The,’ 354, 
on 

Barr, Miss, Portratt of, 334 

Barr, Robert, 334 

Barrie, J. M., 286 

Barrington, Mrs., 35 

Barthe, M., 78, 129 

Bastien- Lepage, Te 2ST 

Bath Club, 400 

Battersea (Symphony), 102, 377 

Battersea Bridge, Old, 100, 186, 201 
(Blue and Silver, later Blue and 


Gold), 90, II2, 154, 166, 170, 
172-76, 217, 258 
(Brown and Silver), 93, 301 
Baudelaire, 46, 70, 85, 91, 102, 217, 


255 

Bavarian Royal Academy, 279 

Bayliss, Sir Wyke, 251, 268-70 

Beardsley, A., 184, 188, 310, 312, 314, 

345, 352, 373 

Beatty, J. W., 432 

Beck, J. W., 308 

Becquet, M., 37, 49, 367 
Portrait of, 73 

Beggars, The, 199, 277 

Belfont, M., 311, 326 

Bénédite, L., 48, 86, 414 

Benham, Capt., 29, 31-33 

Benham, Major H. H., 32-33 

Berners Street Gallery, 69, 110 

Bernhardt, Sarah, 138, 188 

Beurdeley, Maitre, 330, 353 

Bibi Lalouette, 38, 49, 50 

Bierstadt, A., 100 

Bigham, Mr. Justice, 348-49 

Billingsgate, 107, 186, 275 

Bisschop, Dr., 423 

Blaas, E. de, 191 

Black Lion Wharf, 60, 66, 69, 198, 


333 

Blackburn, Vernon, 286 

Blaikie, W. B., 403 » 

Blanche, J. E., 146 

Blenheim, 304 

Blind, Mr. and Mrs., 84 

Blomfield, R. E., 287 

Blott, Mr., 164 

Blue and Gold (Westminster), 154, 
170 

Blue Girl, 124, 214, 218. See Florence 
Leyland ; also Waller 

Blue Wave, The, 68, 301, 306 

Blum, R., 191, 194 

Bode, Dr., 431 

Boehm, Sir J. E., 154, 188 


440 


Boer War, 398 

Boisbaudran, Lecocq de, 34, 46, 113 
Boldini, J., 320, 350, 352, 353 

Bonnat, L. J. F., 253, 391 

Bonvin, F. S., 48, 53, 59 

““ Book of the Artists,’’ 100 

“‘ Book of Scoundrels,” 344 

Boot, Miss, 64 

Booth, Mrs., 76 

Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 209, 


432 
_ Public Library, 106, 309 
Botticelli, 147 
Boucher’s Diana, copy of, 51 
Boudin, E., 338 
Boughton, G. H., 39, 57, 59, 111, 137, 
150, 155 
Bouguereau, A. W., 210, 252 
Boussod Valadon, Messrs., 300 
Bourgeois, L., 300 
Bowen, Lord Justice, 169-81 
Boxall, Sir Wm., 17, 18, 54, 110, 338 
Bracquemond, F., 48, 73, 85, 91, 
216 
Breck, Adjt.-Gen., 30 
Bremen, Meyer von, 210 
Bridge, The, 199, 200 
“ British Architect, The,’’ 20 
British Artists’ Exhibition, 259, 262 
British Artists, The Royal Society of, 
239, 246, 250-70, 370 
British Museum, 75, 107, 108, 170 
“ Broad Bridge, The,”’ 157 
Bronson, H., 191 
Bronson, Mrs., I9I, 195 
Bronson, Miss E. (Countess Rucellai), 
189 
Brooklyn Museum, 124, 432 
Brown, Ernest G., 186, 204, 359 
Brown, Prof. Fred., 344 
Brown, Ford Madox, 82, 84, 110, 147, 
203, 204 
Brownell, W. C., 186 
Browning, Robert, 191, 195 
Bruckmann, W. L., 423 
Brunel, 76 
Buller, Sir Redvers, 399 
Buloff, 13 
Bunney, R., 191, 193 
Burckhardt, Count, 71, 72 
Burgomaster Six, The, 199 
Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1o1 
Burne-Jones, Sir E., 81, 104, 107, 147, 
153, 154, 169, 175, 178, 204, 227, 
253, 333 
Burne-Jones, Lady, 168-69, 175 


INDEX 


Burr, John, 260 
ene Director of National Gallery, 
17 

Burton, Sir R., 404 

Burton, Lady, 404 

Burty, P., 100, 102 

Bussy, Simon, 391 

Butler, Mr., 193 

Butterfly, The, 89-90, 121, 127, 219, 

220, 260, 265, 269, 294, 403 

Company of the, 355-57, 397 

Byng, Rev. Mr., 272 


Café de Bode, 75 
Café Moliérve, 45, 48 
Cahen, Countess Edmond de, 87 
Calmour, Alfred, 84 
Cambridge University Art Society, 246 
Campbell, Lady Archibald, 138, 162- 
63, 214-16, 233 

Portrait of. See Yellow Buskin 
Campbell, Lady Colin, 138 

Portrait of (Ivory and White), 262 
Canaletto, 103, 189-90, I9I, 232, 335, 


340 
Canfield, R. A., 165, 194, 202, 426-27, 
439, 433 
Portrait of, 414 
Caravaggio, 341 
Carlisle, Earl of, 82 
Carlyle, Thomas, 89, 119-21, 123, 334, 


403, 404 
Portrait of (Black and Grey), 53, 
7a Oo, t19-20, “122,'123, 154, 
ROAP eS 70,5171, 0174;)-185, 221, 
240, 241, 282, 298-99, 308 
Carmen, 362 
Carmen Rossi, Madame, 313, 331, 358, 
377-79, 387 
Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, 432 
Carr, J. Comyns, 240 
Carte, Mrs. D’Oyly, 160-61, 241-43 
Cassatt, Mrs., Portrait of, 257 
Cassell, 209 
Cauldwell, J. E., 397 
Cauty, H. H., 251 
Cazin, C., 73 
Cellini, 185, 297 
Cennino, 185, 379 
Centenary Exhibition of Lithography, 
331, 332 , 
** Century Magazine,” 22, 31, 222, 237 
Champfleury, 91 
Chantrey Collection, 111-12 
Chapman, Alfred, 109 


Chapman, Miss Emily, 16, 47, 68, 81, 


98 
Chase, William M., 20, 21, 235-38, 391 
Portrait of, 236 
Chelsea Arts Club, 141, 247, 300 
Chelsea Girl, 257 
Chelsea in Ice (Harmony in Grey), 263 
Chelsea Rags, 279, 375 
Chelsea Reach (Harmony in Grey), 144 
Cheyne Walk, houses in, 76, 98, 283, 
284, 285, 414, 423 
Chicago Exhibition, 308-309 
Chicago Institute, 130, 432 
Childs, F. L. T., 25 
Christie, J. E., 78 
Chronique des Beaux-Arts, 303 
Church, F. E., 100 
Cimabue, 253 
Claghorn Collection, the, 209 
Claretie, Jules, 94 
Clarke, Sir Edward, 348-49 
Claude, 102, 103, 340 
Clausen, George, 270, 289 
Clémenceau, Georges, 300 
Clerkenwell Church, 360 
Coast of Brittany, The, 67-69, 220 
Coast Survey, Nos. I. and II., 31-32, 
50, 62 
Cole, Alan Dy I7, 105, 135-37, 144, 
145, 147-51, 165-66, 187, 204, 207, 
210-13, 218, 228, 240, 256, 273, 284, 
300, 354, 359, 435 
Cole, Mrs. A. S., 138, 273, 359 
Cole, Sir Henry, 33, 106, 149, 187, 212, 
217, 375 note 
Portrait of, 145 
Cole, Timothy, 338-40, 397 
Cole, Vicat, 112 
Collingwood, W. G., 155, 167 
Collins, Wilkie, 70 
Colvin, Sir Sidney, 128, 246, 349 
Comstock, Gen. C. B., 24 
Conder, Charles, 412 
Conway, Dr. Moncure, Io1, 247 
Cook, E. T., 82, 180 
Cooper, T. S., 69 
Coquelin Ainé, 225 
Corder, Miss Rosa, 156 
Portrait of (Arrangement in Black 
and Brown), 146, 156, 165, 185, 
208, 280, 283, 299, 306, 373, 426 
Cordier, 91 
Coronio, Mrs., 56 
Courbet, G., 34, 46, 47, 48, 52; 53, 54, 
64, 67-68, 86, 95, 102, 103-104, 113, 
195, 216, 253 


441 


INDEX 


Courbet on the Shore, 95 
“ Court and Society Review, The,” 
34, 259 
Couture, T., on on 252 
Cowan, 2 Toa 
Portrait of (Grey Man), 324-2 : 
Crabb, Capt. of " la a BS 
Crackenthorpe, Hubert, 279 
Crane, Walter, 153-54, 175, 270 
Creditor, The (see Gold Scab), 188 
Cremorne Gardens, 76-77, 144, 432 
Orépuscule (Flesh- Colour and Green), 
86, 99-100, 222 
Crivelli, 147 
Crockett, S. R., 334 
Portrait of ids Man), 334 
““ Cuckoo, The,” 207 
Curtis, Ralph, I9I, 193-95, 240 
Cust, Henry, 286 


233- 


DaBo, Léon, 43 
D’Ache, Caran, 398 
““ Daily Chronicle, The,” 3329950958 
** Datly Graphic, The,” 332 
* Datly Mail, The,” 309 
“* Daily News, The, 42 143, 168, 246 
“ Daily Telegraph, The,’’ 59, 67, 246 
Dalou, J., 131 
Dalziel Brothers, 71 
Dam Wood, The, 124 
“* Danbury ‘News, ag. 
Dance House, The, 51, 276 
Dannat, W. T.. 264 
Darwen, 47 
Daughter of Eve, A, 426 
Davenport, Dr., 325 
David, 34, 363 
Davis, Edmund, 59, 376 
Davis, Jefferson, 28 
Day, Mr. Justice, 179 
Day, Lewis F., 243 
Degas, H. G. E., 34, 53, 239, 253, 
349 
Delabrosse, 292 
Delacroix, E., 91, 253 
Hommage a, 91 
Delannoy, Ernest, 37, 41-46, 55, 81 
Delaroche, Paul, 34 
Delatre, A., 49, 50, 62, 85 
Deluge, 51 
Denny, Annie, 33 
Deschamps, Charles, 110, 188 
Design for a Mosaic (Gold Girl), 106 
Desnoyers, Fernand, 74 
Desoye, Mme., 85 


442 


** Detvoit Free Press,” 
Dicey, F., 137 
Dicksee, Frank, 112 
Dilkes, the, 17 
Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield), 165 
Dobbin, James C., 28 

Doria Palace, 363 

Dordrecht—A Litile Red Note, 256 
Dowdeswell, Messrs., 188, 208, 213, 


137 


260, 308 
Dowdeswell, Walter, 135, 211, 235, 
260, 263, 266 


Drake, A. W., 222 

Draughn, Miss Marian, 359 

Dresden Museum, 109 

Drouet, C., 37, 39, 49, 50, 51, 52, 66, 
68, 321, 365, 367 

Portrait of, 50, 66 
Du Maurier, G., 35, 36, 39, 40, 55, 59, 
57, O1, 170, 255, 327-28 
Dublin Modern Art Gallery, 130-31 
Dublin Sketching Club Exhibition, 
240-41 

Duchatel, E., 311 

Dudley Gallery, 110, 144 

Dunn, Henry Treffy, 85, 160 

Dunthorne’s Gallery, 278, 332 

Duran, Carolus, 48, 195, 398 

Durand-Ruel, 110, 405 

Duranty, 91, 163 

Diirer, 185 

Duret, Théodore, 1, 34, 48, 52, 53, 63, 
68, 95, 99, 144, 159, 202, 216, 
276, oth son 311, 321, 432, 
434, 435, 

Portrait ee “Flesh: -Colour and 

Black), 89, 216-17, 233 

Dutchman holding the Glass, The, 50 

Duveneck, Frank, 190-91, 193, 207 


EARNSDALE, 47 
East, Sir A., 251, 435 
Eastwick, Messrs. Harrison and, 7, 13 
Eaton, Sir F., 309 
Eddy, A. J., 3, 103, 356 
Portrait of , 323-24 
Eden Case, 329-30, 344, 350-57 
Eden, Sir W., 344, 353, 366 
Eden, Lady, Portrait of (Brown and 
Gold), 326, 329 
Edinburgh Exhibition, 280 
Edward, King, 108-109 
Edwards, Edwin, 66, 67, 109, 131 
Edwards, Mrs., 66, 67, 182 
Eeden, F. Van, 271 


INDEX 


Effie Deans, 146, 280, 418 
Egg, A. L., 69 
Eldon, W., 136, 212, 234 
Ellis, F. S., 180 
Eloise, 39 
Elwell, Mr., 402 

Portrait of, 359 
Embroidered Curtain, The, 276 
Encamping, 66 
Encampment, An, 22 
“ English Etchings,” 275 
“ English Illustrated Magazine, The,” 


240 

Erskine, The Hon. Stuart, 279 
Estampe Originale, L’, 326 
“Etching and Etchers,” 


TOO pEH 107, 


275 
Etchings from Nature, Two, 54 


Facan, L., 366 

Falling Rocket, The (Nocturne in Black 
and Gold), 144, 153, 155, 166, 170, 
I71I, 173, 176, 178, 223, 305 

Fan, Study for a, 377 

Fan, The (Red and Black), 326 

Fantin-Latour, 34, 37, 47, 48, 49, 5I- 
55, 57, 63, 64, 66-68, 73, 75, 79, 85, 
86, 91, 92, 93, 94, 103, 104, 107, 109, 
BRA EET, 115, %90,7.231,- 1389, 216, 
253, 326, 368, 404 

Farge, John La, 362 

Farquharson, J., 370 

Farren, Nellie, 158 

Figaro, 398 

Fillmore, President, 20 

“ Fine Arts Quarterly, The,” 74 

Fine Art Society, 108, i111, 180, 186, 
188-90, 202-5, 218-19, 246, 332, 344, 
427-28 

Finette, 49 

Five Wheel, The, 166 

“* First Sermon, The,’ 71 

Fish Shop, The—Busy Chelsea, 263, 
276, 279 

Flesh-Colour and Grey, 221 

Flower, C., 135 

Flower, Wickham, 160, 188 

Mrs, Wickham, 160 

Followers, the, 229-31, 239, 243 

Forbes, Archibald, 241 

Forbes, C. S., 191, 202 

Ford, Sheridan, 160, 285, 288-94 

Mrs, Sheridan, 288-90 
Forge, The, 67, 73 
“ Fors Clavigera,’”’ 169 


“* Fortnightly Review, The,’ 81, 
247-48 
Foster, John, 56 
" Four Masters of Etching,’ 185 
Francesca, Piero della, 162 
Franklin, Miss Maud, 125, 136, 146, 
155, 158, 190, 195, 206, 211, 
233, 272;:250 
Etching, 158 
Portrait of (Arvangement in Black 
and White, No. 1), 158-59, 208 
Frederick, Harold, 346 
Free Trade Wharf, 186 
Breer, C..14557,.069,94)/ 106-442, 152; 
188, 210, 212, 275, 306, 417, 431-34, 
436 
French Artists, Society of, 110, 144 
French Gallery, the, 99, 110’ 
French Set of Etchings, the, 43-44, 49- 
50, 61, 198 
French Universal Exhibition, 99 
Freshfield, D., 130-31 
Frick, 306 
Frieseke, Frederick, 391 
Frith, W. P., 58, 69, 176 
Fromentin, Eugéne, 185 
Fulleylove, J., 319 
Fulleylove, Mrs., 319 
Fumette, 39, 49 
Fur Jacket, The (Black and Brown, 
Brown, Amber and Black), 74, 146, 
154, 166, 280, 309, 432 
Furse, C. W., 287, 310, 370 


142, 


GALLATIN, Whistler, 52, 130 

Galsworthy, Mrs., 136 

Garden, The, 199, 287 

Gardens, The (Cremorne), 263 

Gaskell, Mrs., 77 

Gautier, Mr. and Mrs., 30 

Gautier, Théophile, 102 

Gay, W., 321, 322-23 

“* Gazette des Beaux-Arts,” 74, 86, 93, 
100, 102, 163, 203, 216, 256, 275 

Gee, H., 136 

“ Gentle Art of Making Enemies, The, 
90, 106, 117, 127-28, 137, 160, 168, 
178, 207, 228, 235, 236, (2462-248; 
249, 269, 282, 285, 289-96, 303, 328, 
354, 417, 437-38 

Gérard, Mére, 39-40, 47, 50, 51, 66, 
249 

Gérome, J. L., 34, 252-53 

Gibson, C. D., 359 

Gilbert, A., 280, 299, 347-49, 370 


443 


INDEX 


Gilchrist, Miss Connie, Portrait (Gold 
Girl), 146, 159, 185, 188, 432 
Gilder, R. W., 222, 223 
Giudecca (Nocturne), 202 
Glasgow Corporation, 299 
Glasgow Exhibition, 282 
Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts, 331 
Glasgow University, 429 
Gleyre, 34-35, 37, 39, 43, 46, 252, 327 
Godwin, E. W., 141, 159, 163, 187, 204, 
200,0270272)'298 
Godwin, E. (junior), 90, 355, 436 
Godwin, Mrs. Beatrix (later Mrs. J. 
McN. Whistler), 234, 262, 271- 
74, 292-93, 298, 301, 310, 313- 
20, 322, 326, 329-33 
Death of, 334-35 
Portrait of (Harmony in Red: 
Lambplight), 262 
Gold and Orange, 376 
Gold Girl, 106 
Gold Scab, The, 184, 188 - 
Gold Screen, The (Purple and Gold), 87, 


93 

Goncourt, Edmond de, 50, 85, 284 

Goncourts, the de, 85 

““ Good Words,” 71 

Goold, Miss, 283 

Gosse, Edmund, 132, 275 

pce gee ai Frederick, 65, 199, 202, 203, 
204, 349 

Goupil Gallery, 63, 65, 184, 267, 299- 


395 
Grafton Gallery, 312, 369 
Graham, William, 154, 170, 173, 193, 
259 
Grahame, Kenneth, 286 
Grand, Mrs. Sarah, 400 
Grande Place, Brussels, 282 
Grant, General, U.S., 94 
Graves, Algernon, 164, 174, 207 
Henry, 145, 156, 164, 165, 178, 
207, 208, 237-38 
Gravesande, S. Van’s, 418 
Gray, W. E., 395 
Great Sea, The (Green and planet! 376 
Greaves, Walter and Harry, 63-65, 76— 
79, 90, 97-99, 106, 115, 118, 121, 123, 
127, 129, 135, 148, 339 
Green, Rev. Mr., 222 
Green and Violet, 257-58, 347 
Greenaway, Kate, 167 
Gregg, Gen, D. McN., 24 
Greiffenhagen, M., 370 
Gretchen at Heidelberg, 44 
Grey and Gold, 117 


444 


Grey Lady, 214-15 

Grey Man, The, 324, 334 

Grisi, 135 

Grist, Mr., 191 

Grolier Club, 198 

Exhibition, 351 

Gross Geroldseck, 43 

Grossmith, G., 56 

Grosvenor Gallery, 123, 145, 153-54, 
158-59, 170, 185, 208, 213, 247, 256, 
282, 291, 369 

‘““ Grosvenor Notes,”’ 159 

Guardi, 103, 340, 364 

Guitar Player, The, 66 

Guthrie, Sir James, 298, 321, 370, 374, 
429, 436 


3? 


HAANEN, E. Van, 191, 193 
Haarlem Gallery, 118, 420-22. 
Haden, Annie, 59 
Drypoint, 65 
Etching, 50 
Haden, Lady, 4, 6, 10, 16, 17, 53, 55, 
224, 329 
Haden, Sir F. Seymour, 16-18, 33, 43, 
44, 49-50, 53, 54, 55, 56, 59, 63, 75, 
100, IOI, 203, 207, 209, 224, 282, 345 
Haghe, Louis, 225157 
Hague, The, 418-19 
Exhibition, 75 
Halkett, G. R., 221 
Hallé, C: E., 153 
Hals, Franz, 47, 91, 103, 118, 195, 254, 
419-22 
Halsbury, Lord, 283 
Hamerton, P. i 74, 76, 102, hopsgenhe? 
‘118, 275 
Hamilton, Dr., 207 
Hamilton, J. McLure, 288-90 
Hannay, A As phe of, 335 
Hannay, A. H., 
Hanover Galleree Exhibition, 205, 207 
Hare, Augustus, 184 
Harland, H., 287, 310 
Mrs., 287 
“ Harper's Magazine,” 
Harpignies, H., 73 
Harris, F., 346 
Harrison, Alex., 321, 324, 368, 398 
Harrison, Henry, 52 
Harrison, R. H. C., 173, 259 ~ 
Harry, Gérard, 284, 291 
Harte, Bret, 136 
Hartley Institution, Southampton, 143 
Haweis, Rev. H. R., 174 


327-28 


INDEX 


““ Hawk, The,” 298 

Hawkins, Gen. Rush C., 281-82 

Haxton, Mr., 287 

Head of ee Man Smoking, 52 

Hearn, G., 

Heffernan, Tee, see Jo 

Heinemann, E., 341-42 

Heinemann, W., 142, 160, 271, 279, 288, 
294, 326, 336, 341, 344, 351, 353, 355, 
362, 365, 368, 373, 377, 392-94, 397, 
ne 408, 411, 417, 424, 428, 433, 
43 

Heinemann, Mrs., Portrait of, 426 

Helleu, P., 320, 347, 350 

Helst, Van der, 74; 91 

Henley, W. E., 285-87, 331, 344, 393, 


434 

Herbert,-]. R.; 252 

Herkomer, Sir H. von, 112, 285, 346, 
304 

Heseltine, J. P., 180 

Hiroshige, 112, 114, 142 

His Reverence, 427 

““ History of Modern Illustration,’ 72 

Hogarth, 15-16, 103, 156, 232-33, 255, 
341, 426, 436 

Hogarth Club, 141, 261, 263, 268, 291 

Hogg, Hon. J., 241 

Hokusai, 85 

Holbein, 48 

Holdgate, Mr., 165 

Hole, W., 221 

Holker, Sir John, 169, 170,.171, 172, 
173, 179 

Holloway, C. E., 333, 335, 347 

Holmes, G. A., TA 35 240, 267 

Holmes, Sir R. R., 108 

Hommage a bor biz: 58 

Hommage a la Vérité (see Fantin), 04 

Horniman, E. J., 235 

Horsley, ce C., 93, 257-58 

Houghton, A. B., 58, 138 

Hour in the Life of a Cadet, An, 22 

Our, Phe, 127 

Howard, F., 369-70, 435 

Howard, Gen. O. O., 24 

Howell, C. A., 79, 81-83, 84, 85, 138, 
141,145, 155-56, 163-66, 184, 188, 
190, 208, 218, 404 

Howells, W. D., 321 

Hubbard, Elbert, 430 

Hubbell, Henry S., 391 

Huddleston, Baron, 168, 174 

Hueffer, Ford Madox, 84 

Huish, M. B., 180, 188 

Hungerford, Mrs., 214 


Hungerford Bridge, 72, 73 
Hunt, W. Holman, 61, 153, 252, 254, 
270 
Huth, Louis, 86, ro9, 138 
Huth, Mrs., 126, 211 
Portrait of, 126, 256 
Hutton, Mrs., 210 


Idyl, An, 284 
“ [llustrated London News,’ 303 
Illustrators, Society of, 331, 345 
Imagier, L’, 326 
“ Indépendance Belge,’”’ 291 
Ingram, W. Ayerst, 250, 261, 266, 267 
Ingres, 51, 103, 364 
International Society of Sculptors, 
Painters, and Gravers, 153, 257, 
271, 354, 309-77, 413, 429, 435 
Exhibitions, 69, I10, 361, 372, 
_. 374-76 
Tonides, the, 107—108 
Aleco, 35, 55, 56, 153 
Alexander, 35, 88-89, 107 
Helen (see Mrs. William Whistler), 
153 
Luke, 35, 37, 39, 41, 43, 55, 56, 61, 
95, 134, 153, 302, 306, 404, 
424, 427 
Portrait of, 64 
Iris, The (see Miss Kinsella), 413-14 
Irving, Sir Henry 
Portrait of (Arrangement in Black), 
74, 84, 144-45, 154, 156, 166, 
171, 175, 185, 208, 283, 432 
Isle de la Cité, 60, 201 
Israels, J., 280, 418 
iwan-Muller, E. B., 286 
Ives, Prof. H. C., 309, 430 


Jackson, F. Ernest, 120 
Jacomb-Hood, G. P., 188, 315 
Jacquemart, J., 85, 158 
James, F., 225, 268, 283, 287 
Jameson, F., 104-105, 109 
Japanese Art, 89-92, 98, 
II2—14, 200-201 
Jarvis, Lewis, 188 
Jekyll, 147, 150 
Jersey, 218 
Jeune, Lady (Lady St. Helier), 247 
Jobbins, Mr., 191, 202 
“so °° (Mrs. Joanna Abbott), 63, 67- 
68, 84, 92, 130, 186 
Portrait of, 67-68, 156 
Johnson Club, 281 


103, I05, 


445 


INDEX 


Johnson, Dr., 394 

Johnston, Humphrey, 321 
Jongkind, J. B., 73 
Jopling-Rowe, Mrs., 272 
Josey, R., 164-65 

Jourdan, M., 14, 15 

Jubilee in the Abbey, 266 
Junior Etching Club, 65, 275 


KEENE, C., 55, 58, 167-68, 263, 281 
Kelly, F., 286 
Kennedy, David, 427 
Kennedy, E. G., 65, 142, 318-19, 334- 
38, 350-53, 397, 432, 435 
Kensington Gardens, 332 
Keppel, F., 108, 223 
Kerr-Lawson, J., 364 
Key, J. Ross, 30-31 
Kingsley, Martha, 4 
Kinsella, Miss, Portrait of the Iris 
(Rose and Green), 325, 347, 413-14 
Kingston-Lacy Collection, 411 
Kipling, Mrs., 287 
Kipling, R., 286 
Kitchen, The, 199 
Kruger, President, 27-28 
Mrs., 399 


LABOUCHERE, H., 29, 146, 271-72 

Lady at a Window, 156 

Lagoon, The, 198 

Lagrange, L., 93 

Lalouette, 38 

Lamartine, M., 12 

Lambert, John, 38, 41, 397 

Lamont, T. R., 35, 40 

Lamour, 317 

Landor, A. H. Savage, 341-42 

Landseer, Sir E., 93 

Lane, Sir Hugh, 130-31 

Lang, A., 136 

Langdon, Gen. L. L., 23-25 

Lange Leizen (Purple and Rose), 87, 91, 
306, 432 

Langtry, Mrs., Portrait of, 213 

Lannion, The Yellow House, 320 

Lantéri, Prof. E., 131, 225, 415 

Larned, Col., 20-23 

Last of Old Westminster, The, 72, 73 

Laurens, J. P., 73, 253 

Laveille, A., 85 

Lavery, J., 300-301, 321, 369-70, 374- 
75» 424, 427, 434-36 

Lawless, Hon. F., 225 

Lawson, C., 159, 275 


446 


| Leyland, Mrs., 


Leathart, J., 109, 306 

Lee, Col. R. E., 20, 22 

Lee, Gen., 24 

Lee, T. Stirling, 435 

Leech, J., 55, 156 

“‘ Legendary Ballads,’’ 72 

Legion of Honour, 300 

Legros, A., 37, 47, 48, 53, 54, 55, 61, 
63, 73, 74, 91, IOI, 147, 207 

Leighton, Lord, 35, 112, 153, 154, 178, 
231-33, 247, 252-53, 201, 266, 308, 
332 | 

Lemercier, 311 

Lenoir, Miss, 242 

Leslie, C. R., 93, 252 

L’Estampe Originale, 326 

Lewis, Arthur, 56 

Lewis, Sir G., 184, 291, 346-47 


{ Leyland, EY Ri 89, 98, 105, 106, I09, 


116, 124, 125, 133, 147-52, 184, 
185, 188, 217, 305 
Portrait of, 126 
116, 120, 124-25, 126, 
135-36, 153-54, 163 note, 170, 
211 
Portratts of, 175-76, 188 
Fanny Leyland, 51 
eyland, Florence, Portrait of (Blue 
Girl), 124, 125, 187, 432) 
Liberty, L., 86 
Liddell, Dean, 181 
Lido, The, 193 
Lillie in our Alley, 360, 362, 375 
Linde, Dr., 159 
Lindenkohl, A., 30-31 
Lindsay, Sir Coutts, 
280 
Lindsey Palace, 77 
Lindsey Row, houses in, 75, 76, 81, 83, 
97-98, 128-44 
Lippi, Filippo, 147 
“* Lithography and Lithographers,” 
Lithography Case, 346—50 
Lithography, revival of, 311-12 
Little Blue Bonnet, 361, 373 
Little Cardinal, 428 
Little Evelyn, 359 
“ Little Journeys,” 
Little Lady Sophie ae Soho, 360, 362, 


152-54, 169-70, 


326 


375 
Little Pool, The, 62 
Little Putney, The, 186 
Litile Red Note : Dordrecht, 256 
Little Rose of Lyme Regis, The, 274, 


331, 359, 300, 432 
Little Venice, 223 


INDEX 


Little White Girl, The (Symphony in 
White, No. II.), 63, 92-93, 126, 
306, 331, 397, 405, 417 
Verses on, 93 
Liverdun, 43 


Livermore, Mrs., I, 5-6, 9 


Liverpool Art Club Exhibition, 1309, 
142, 143 
Lobsters, The Loves of the, 184-85, 


188 
Logsdail, W., 191 
““ London Garland,’’ 331 
London Memorial Exhibition, 51, 64, 
67, 73, 74, 104, 105, 106, 108, 118, 
I2I, 173, 198, 212-13, 308, 325, 333 
Long, E., 252 
“ Long Elizas,’’ 85 
Lorimer, J. H., 266 
Louise, Princess, 150 
Louvre, the, 41-42, 46, 47, 48, 52, 322, 
412 
Lovell, John M., 295 
Low, Will H., 431 
Lowell, 1, 3, 4, 5, 26, 281 
Lucas, G., 41, 99, 144 
Ludovici, A., 240, 256, 435 
Luxembourg, 209, 299, 408, 413 
Lynden, Baron Van, 280 
Baroness Van, 280 


MacCatt, C. H., 294 
MacColl, D. S., 139, 310, 312, 344, 371, 


429 
MacGeorge Collection, the, 427 
Maclise, D., 69 
Macmillan, Messrs., 331 
MacMonnies, F., 321, 322, 330, 353, 
377-78, 386-89 
Maeterlinck, M., 291-93, 437-38 
“ Magazine of Art, The,’’ 267, 405 
Major's Daughter, The, 71, 72 
Mallarmé, S., 310—-II, 315, 321 
Portrait of, 311 
Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition, 
47, 231 
Manet, E., 53, 73, 74, 85, 91, 94, 195, 
216, 218, 253, 404, 435 
Mann, Mr., Portrait of, 65 
Mansfield, Burton, 95, 121 
Mansfield, Howard, 55, 210, 306, 408 
Mantz, P., 74, 93, 100, 102 
Manuel, Master Stephen, 359 
Marchande de Moutarde, La, 50, 275 
Marchant, William, 303 
Maris, J. M., 280 


Marks, Murray, 85, 86, 107, 147, 158 
Marks, Stacy, 56, 252 
Marlborough, Duke of, 304 
Marmalade, Marquis de, 97, 101 
Marriott-Watson, H. B., 286 
Martin, J., 76 
Martin, B. E., 222 
Martin, Henri, 37, 47, 53 
Martin, Homer, 142 
Martinet, 73 
Marty, P., 311 
Marx, Roger, 300 
Marzetti, Mrs., 213-14, 219-20 
Mason, George, 58 
Master Smith, The, 274, 331, 338, 362, 
427, 432 
Mathew, Justice, 348 
Mauritshuis, the, 419-21, 423 
Maus, O., 276 
McCarthy, J., 298 
McClure, S. Se 287 
“ McCluve’s Magazine,” 
McCulloch, G., 57 
McKim, 309 
McNeill, Alicia, 6, 9, 10, 18 
Charles Donald, 4 
Donald, 4 
Martha, 4 
William G., 4 
May, Henry, 355 
Phil, 344, 359 
Mazzini, I19 
Meche de Silas, 58 
Melbourne, Lord, 261 
Melbourne Museum, 109 
Melnikoff, Col., 5, 7 
Melville, A., 289, 291, 370 
Menpes, M., 139, 160, 200, 203, 206, 
207, 223, 230-31, 240, 242, 257, 264 
268, 297 
Mere Gérard, La, 39-40, 50, 51, 67 
Etching, 50 
Meredith, G., 79-81, 249 
Merritt, Mrs., 116, 208, 241 
Méryon, C., 60, 142 
Mesdag, H. W., 280, 417, 423 
Metsu, 341 
Meux, Lady, 212, 217-18, 240, 299, 306 
Portrait of (Flesh-Colour and 
Pink), 211, 217-18, 240 
Portrait of (Black and White), 211 
217-18, 312 
Portrait in Sables, 212 
Milcendeau, Charles, 321 
Miles, Frank, 214, 225 
Miles, F. B., 27, 37-38 


328 


447 


INDEX 


Millais, Sir J. E., 54, 61, 93, 112, 147, 
153, 154, 165, 205, 251, 254, 299 

Millbank, 198 

Millet, 405 

Minton, 225 

Mirbeau, O., 320, 330 

Miser, The, 199 

Mitchell, Dr. Chalmers, 435 

““ Modern Men,” 285 

‘““ Modern Painting,’’ 288 

Moncrieff, Mrs., 138, 182 

Monet, C., 267 

Moniteur, 73 

Mont, Neven du, 435 

Montesquiou, Comte de, 284, 320, 430 

Portrait of, 157, 284 

Montezuma, 40 

Montiori, Mrs., 136 

Moody, Mr., 149 

Moore, Albert, 58, 77, 103, 130, 135, 
142, 147, 168, 174, 180, 226 

Moore, Augustus, 298 

Moore, George, 288, 329-31, 349, 354 

Moore, Henry, 143 

Moreau, Gustave, 391 

Moreau-Nélaton Collection, 91 

Morgan, Mr., 303 

Morning before the Massacre of St. 
Bartholomew, The, 71, 72 
** Morning Post, The,’’ 149, 417 

Morris, Harrison S., 416, 431 

Mrs., 416 
Morris, Phil, 120 
Morris, W., 85, 107, 147, 161, 186, 227, 


244, 333 
Morrison, A., 286 
Morse, S., 161, 218, 366 


Morse, Mrs., 161 

Mother, The (Arrangement in Grey and 
Black, No. I.) (see Mrs. Whistler), 
$9,474). GO, 110; 117,416, 25; 
164, 165, 208-10, 220, 237-38, 
240, 280, 282, 298-300 

Dry-point, 156 

Moulton, Mrs., eng st 

Mulready, W., 

Munich ert ee eA Exhibition, 279 

Murano, 332, 364 

Muyano Glass Furnace, 193 

Murger, 37, 102 

Music Room, The (Green and Rose), 


64-65, 301 


NASH, J., 22, 157 
National Academy of Design, 372 


448 


National Art Exhibition, 1886, 270 

National Art Collections Fund, 173 
note 

National Gallery, the, 47, 109, 112, 
173 note, 212, 232, 340 

National Portrait Gallery, 221 

“* National (Scots) Observer, The,’’ 285— 
86 

Naval Review Set, 266, 267, 374 

Neighbours, The (Gold and Orange), 


376 

New English Art Club, 282, 344, 371 

New Gallery, 153, 282, 308, 376 

““ New Review,” 351 

New York Etching Club, 209 

** New York Herald,’ 282, 289 

New York Metropolitan Museum, 57, 
146, 210, 335, 432 

New York Public Library, 100, 109 

“ New York State Library Bulletin,” 
328 

Nicholson, W., 351, 356 

“ Nineteenth Century, The,’’ 185, 219 

Norman, The Misses, 417 

Northumberland House, 147 

Norton, C. E., 169 

Noseda, Mrs., 164 

Note Blanche, 68 


OBACH, Messrs., 152, 160 

“* Observer,”’ 259 

Ochtervelt, 412 

Old Chelsea, 197 

Dr. Martin, 222-24 

Old Putney Bridge, 186 

Old Westminster Bridge, 72 

Olga, Grand Duchess, 13 

“Once a Week,” 71 

Orchardson, Sir W. Q., 112, 232, 280, 
299 

Osborne, Walter, 403 

Oulevey, H., 37, 39, 41, 42, 48, 50, 321, 
368 


Pacific, The, 185 

“* Paddon Papers, The,” 

Pagani, 142 

“ Pageant,’’ The,” 326 

Painter-Etchers, The Royal Society of, 
20 

Palaces, Nocturne, 190, 219-20. 

Pall Mall, exhibition at, 126-27, 143 

* Pall Mall Gazette,’ 127, 218, 246, 
256-58, 269, 277, 286, 308, 327, 330 

“ Pall Mall Pictures,’ 263 


83, 218 


INDEX 


Palmer, Amos, Io 

Palmer, Miss, 4-5, 18, 19 

Palmer, Mrs. Potter, 363 

Paris, Centenary Exhibition, 331, 332 

Paris, Memorial Exhibition, 68, 105- 
106, 358 

Paris, Universal Exhibition, 159, 163, 
255, 279, 281, 397 

Park, Rev. Roswell, 19-20 

Parrish, S., 224 

Parry, Mr. Serjeant (now Judge), 169- 
8I 


Parsons, Alfred, 345 

“‘ Passages from Modern English Poets,” 
69 

Pastel Society, 282 

Pater, W., 227, 244 

Pawling, S. S., 335 

Payne, 342 

Peacock Room, The, 77, 89, 143-52, 
160, 189, 257, 309 

Pearsall, Booth, 240 

Peck, Miss, Portrait of, 325 

Pellegrini, C., 142, 158, 226 

Pennell (J.), 72, 222-24, 278, 285, 289, 
310-20, 330-33, 336, 338-40, 344, 
346-49, 353, 360, 365, 370-71, 374, 
376, 393-98, 406-408, 410, 413-14, 
423, 425-27, 429-39, 433-35 

Pennell, Mrs. (E.), 335, 344, 347, 353, 
368, 392, 394-95, 410-II, 417-18, 
422-23, 433-34 

Pennington, Harper, 118, I19, I9gI, 
504,202; 221, 225, 232 . 

Pennsylvania Academy, 208-209, 329, 


431 

Pepys, Samuel, 2 

Périvier, President, 353 

Perugino, 390 

Petheram, Mr., 169-81 

Petit Gallery, 300 

Pfalzburg, 43 

Philadelphia Society of Etchers, 209 

Philip, John Birnie, 271 

Philip, Mrs. Birnie, 411, 413, 414, 
424 

Philip, R. Birnie, 406, 407 

jet Portrait of, 359 

Philip, Miss R. Birnie, 212, 275, 331, 

be 335, 336, 340, 341, 306, 376, 393-97, 
401, 414-17, 424-27, 433, 434, 436 

Phillip, John, 59 

Phillips, Sir Claude, 256 

Philosopher, The (see Holloway), 335, 


aT 
Phryne the Superb, 360, 376 


Piano Picture, The (At the Piano), 47, 48, 
52, 53, 58-59, 60, 64, 65, 71, 99, 373 

Picard, E., 291, 292 

“ Piccadilly,” 157 

Piccadilly (Grey and Gold), 241 

“ Piker Papers, The,’ 207 

Poe, E. A., 26, 46 

Pollitt, A. J., Portrait of, 332, 334 

Pomfret, 18-20 

Pool, The, 73 

Poole, R. W., 350 

“‘ Portfolio, The,’’ 107, 178, 186, 275 

Portrait Painters’ Exhibition, 331, 428 

Potter, G., 109, 137, 306 

Potter, Mrs., 47, 109, 138 

Powerscourt, Lord, 240 

PoyuterjeSir . .Ja335)136,° 98) 405055, 
OI; 690) 104, 122; 140) 153, 154;-870, 
178, 203, 252, 255, 364 

Pretty Nelly Brown, 359 

Prince, Miss, 391 

Prince’s Hall, 239, 240, 242 

Prince’s Skating Club, 369 

Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine, La, 
86, 87, 88, 89, 93, IIo, 148, 151, 188, 
305-306, 309, 373 

Prinsep, Val, 57, 79, 93, 116, 125, 129, 


247 
Probyn, Sir Dighton, 149 
“ Propositions No. 2,” 221 
““ Proposition, A Further,” 235 
‘“ Propositions,” 260, 295, 297 
“* Punch,” 55, 255 
Punt, The, 66, 69 
Putnam, Messrs., 295 
Putney Bridge, 111, 185, 186 
Puvis de Chavannes, 162, 320, 362 


Quat’z Arts Ball, 319 
Quilter, H., 163, 187, 191-92 


Rak, George, 110 

Raffalovitch, A., 287 

Rajon, P., 235 

Raleigh, Sir W., 287, 429 

Raphael, 363, 390 

Ratier, Maitre, 330 

Rawlinson, W. J., 109, 138, 155, 164 

Realism, influence of Courbet, 103-104 

Red House, Paimpol, 320 

Red Note, 267 

Red Rag, 297 

Rédacteur du Journal “ L’ Artiste,’ 58-59 

Redesdale, Lord, 117, 128, 133, 136, 

137, 143, 145-46, 148, 149, 188 

Portrait of, 145-46 


449 


INDEX 


Redesdale, Lady, 145 
Regent's Quadrant, 275 
Regnault, H., 195 
Relief Fund in Lancashire, 71 
Rembrandt, 47, 52, 62, 67, 68, 69, 74, 
QI, 103, '166—67, 203, 245, 276-77, 
311, 418-19 
Renouard, P., 335 
Renan, Ary, 378 
Repplier, Agnes, 222 
Réveillon, Mrs., 65, 435 
Reynolds, Sir J., 5, 185, 297, 364, 428, 
429 
Rhodes, Cecil, 332 
Riault, M., 49 
Portrait of, 65 
Rialto, 199 
Ribot, T., 52, 53, 405 
Richmond, 153, 154 
Ricketts, C., 370 
Rico, M., 191, 193 
Ridley, M. W., 66 
Portrait of, 213 
Rijks Museum, 280 
Ritchie, Lady, 17, 33, 34, 59, 150 
Riva, 189 
Roberts, Earl, 399 
Robertson, G., 377, 426 
Robins, Miss E., 344 
Robinson, Lionel, 148 
Rodd, Sir R., 24, 139, 214, 225 
Rodenbach, G., 320 
Rodin, A.,320,325,375,370,388,412, 415 
Roland, Marcel, 261 
Rolshoven, J., 191 
Romeike, 286 
Rose, A., 109, 143, 160, 164, 167, 174, 
180 
Rose and Red, 282 
Ross, Alexander, 310 
Robert, 310 
Rossetti, D. G., 79-80, 82-85, 89, 92, 
93, IOI, 107-109, 137, 147, 153, 168, 
182, 227, 253, 397, 404, 412 
Rossetti, W. M., 59, 69, 71, 79-81, 82, 
84, 85, 91-92, 98, I00, IOI, 102, 105, 
132, 166, 173-74, 178, 180 
Rothenstein, W., 349, 370 
Rotherhithe, 63, 69 
Roussel, T., 57, 96, 263, 287, 294 
Roussoff, P., 193 
Rowley, J., 35-36 
Royal Academy, 18, 54, 58, 63, 67, 60, 
73, 91, 93, 102, IOQ-II, 143-44, 185, 
232, 266 
Royal Academy, Student’s Club, 247 


450 


Royal Scottish Academy, 435-36 

Ruben, Mr., 193 

Rubens, 390 

Rucellai, Countess. See Miss E.Bronson 

Ruggles, Gen., 23 

Ruskin, John, 82, 92, 114, 144, 154-55, 
158, 166-81, 185, 227, 240, 243, 297 

Ruskin Libel Action, 166-81 

Russian Schube, The, 333 

Rutter, Frank, 215 


SACKETT, Major, 23 
St. Gaudens, A., 309 
St. George, 194 
St. James’s Street, 156 
St. John’s, Westminster, 336 
St. Louis Exhibition, 430 
St. Mark’s (Blue and Gold), 189, 194, 
202; '262 
St. Mary Abbots’, Whistler married in, 
272 
St. Peter’s, Rome, 363 
St. Petersburg, 12-14 
St. Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts, 
II, 15 
Hermitage, The, 16 
Sala, George Augustus, 72 
Salaman, M., 233-35, 259, 261 
Salon, 48, 53, 59, 73, 91, 94, 99, 109, 
208, 217, 220, 290) Slop aici a7, 
360, 371, 428 
Salon des Refusés, 73-74, 100 
Sandys, F., 79, 83, 84, 362, 369 
Sarah Brown Students’ Revolution, 
Paris, 319 
Sarasate, P., 160 
Portrait of, 90, 126, 223, 256, 260, 
263, 299, 351, 431 
Sargent, J. S., 240, 309, 321, 332, 339- 
40, 406, 430 
Sarony, 22 
“* Saturday Review,”’ 102, 125, 127, 235, 
346, 349-59, 404 
Sauter, G., 369, 376, 413, 416, 418 
Sauter, Mrs., 422 
Savage Club, 141 
Saverne Museum, 43 
Savile Club, 141, 287 
Savoy Scaffolding, 242 
Scarf, The, 93 
Scharfe, Sir G., 221 
Scheffer, A., 34, 35, 252 
Schmitz, Herr, 44- 
Scottish National Portraits Exhibition, 
221 


INDEX 


““ Scotsman,” 221 
Scott, W., hte 197 
Scott, W. B., 
“ Scribner’ s eRe *” 186, 209 
Sea and Rain, 95, 102, 306 
Secessions, German, 264 
Seeley and Co., 186 
Seitz, Don C., 293 
Seton, Miss, Portrait of (see Daughter 
of Eve), 425 
Severn, A., 56, 72, 85, 179 
Shannon, C. H., 349, 370, 377 
Shannon, J. J., 370 
Shaw, G. B., 278 
Shaw, Norman, 147 
Shipping—Nocturne, 199 
Shipping at eee, 124 
Short, Sir F., 396 
Sickert, By 116, 144, 198 
Sickert, W., 213-16, 225 2237 242 5263; 
280, 283, 287, 332, 346, 348-49 
Portrait of, 234 
Sickert, Mrs. W., 68, 160, 287 
Portrait of, I. (Violet and Pink) 
263 ; Il. (Green and Violet), 263, 
326, 331 
Siesta, The, 332 
Simpson, J. W., 158 
Singleton, Mrs., 138 
Six Projects, 104-105, 
234, 283 
See Venus and Three Figures 
Sixteen Etchings of Scenes on the 
Thames, 108 
Sketching, 67, 69 
Slade Professorship, 181 
Smalley, G. W., 308 
Smith, F. Hopkinson, 224 
Smith, John Russell, 144 
Snyders, 167 
société Nationale des 


10g, 116, 126, 


Beaux-Arts, 


300 

“‘ Society of Three,” 48 

Solferino, 285-86 

Solon, L., 85 

Song of the Graduates, 22 

“* Songs on Stone,’ 279, 326 

Sotheby, Messrs., 188 

Soupe a Trois Sous, 49, 50 

Southampton Water, 218, 432 

South Kensington (Victoria and 
Albert) Museum, 69, 106, 108, I10, 
277 

South Kensington Museum _Inter- 
national Exhibitions, 109 

Sower, H., 56 


Spartali, Mr., 87-88 
Spartali, Christine (Countess Edmond 
de Cahen), 87—88 
Portrait of. See Princesse du Pays 
de la Porcelaine 
“ Spectator, The,” 178 
Speke Hall, 124 
Speke Shore, 124 
Spreckles, Mrs., 188 
“* Standard, The,” 428 
Stansfield, Mrs., 136 
Stanton, General, 95 
Stanton, Mrs. Dr., 4-5 
tay, The, o27 8 22ha 
Starr, S., 131, 247, 258, 262, 268, 279, 
287, 304, 311, 391, 402 
Steevens, G. W., eee 
Stephens, F.S., 144 
Stevens, Alfred (Belgian), 
320 
Stevens, Alfred (English), 252, 262 
Stevenson, R. A. M., 285-87, 310, 312, 


237, 262, 


371 

Stillman, W. J., ror 

Stillman, Mrs. (Marie Spartali), 87-88, 
145, 150 

Stoeckl, Baron de, 30 

Stoker, Bram, 145 

Stokes, Messrs. Frederick, 293 

Stone, Marcus, 252 

Stonington, 4, 18, 26, 33, 51 

Storm, The, 66 

tory; ef asIshyecbs8, peerage: 229-26, 

Story, W., 135, 138, 214, 225-26 

Stott, W., of Oldham, 264 

Strahan, W., 71 

Strange, E. F., 349 

Street at Saverne, 43, 50, 51 

Street, G. S., 286 

Studd, A., 306, 424, 436 

“* Studies of Seven Arts,”’ 

‘* Studio,” the, 326 

Sturges, J., 350, 435 

Sullivan~He | -2222 

Sutherland, Sir Thomas, 148, 160, 184, 
407 

Swain, J., 71 

Swan and Iris, 275 

Swift, Dr. Foster, 4 

Swift, Mary, 3-4 

Swinburne, A. C., 51, 71,°79, 80, 81, 
84, 91, 92, 93, 109, 119, 167, 247-50, 
417 

Symons, A., 140, 184, 368 

Symons, W. C., 280 


368 


451 


INDEX 


TATE GALLERY, the, 90, I12, 154 

Taylor, Tom, 131, 176, 178, 296 

Teck, Prince of, 149, 174, 205 

Templar, Major, 214 

““ Ten O'Clock, The,” 69, 104, 115, 228, 
239-49, 295, 297; 354 

Tennyson, Alfred, 71 

Terborg, 195, 341 

Terry, Edward, 158 

Téte de Paysanne, 52 

Thackeray, W. M., 59 

Thackeray, Miss, 17 

Thames at Chelsea, 438 

Thames, The, 333 

Thames in Ice, The, 63, 65, 69, 99 

Thames Set of Etchings, The, 59, 60-62, 
65, 66, 69, 108, 197-98 

Thames Warehouses, 69 

Theobald, H. S., 260, 307 

Thibaudeau, A. W., 108 

Thomas Brandon, 287, 359 

Thomas, Edmund, 61, 62, 107 

Thomas, Percy, 62, 107, 128, 144 

Thomas, Ralph, 49, 62, 144 

Thomas, Serjeant, 61-62 

Thompson, Sir H., 86, 157 
Catalogue of Blue and White Nankin 

Porcelain, 157 
Thomson, D. Croal, 157, 275, 299-302, 


304 

Thornbury, W., 72 

Three Figures, Pink and Grey (Three 
Girls) (see Six Projects), 103-105, 109, 
148, 308 

Thynne, Mrs. (Annie Haden), 17, 52, 
64-65, 435 

Tiepolo, 105 

““ Times, The,”’ 154, 159, 167-68, 176- 
78, 212, 218, 229, 246, 251, 298, 308, 
361, 375 

Tintoretto, 189, 245, 254, 335, 341 

Tissot, J. J:; 51,85, 231; 1359274 

Tite Street, houses in, 210, 225, 226, 
250-57, 272, 413 

Titian, 177, 189, 325, 341, 364 

Tito, E., 191 

Todd, Col., 8, 9, 10 

Toilet, The, 157 

Traer, Mr., 66, 100 

Traghetto, The, 197-99, 220, 277 

“ Trilby,”’ 35, 39-40, 327-28 

Trouville, 375 

“« Truth,’’ 271, 297 

Tuckerman, H. T., 100 

Tuckerman, Miss, 416 

Tudor House, 79, 80, 81, 83, 84 


452 


Tulip, The (Rose and Gold), 326, 376 

Turner, J. M. W., 76, 166, 167, 340 

Turner, Ross, 190, I91, 202 

Twain, Mark, 136, 140 

Tweed, J., 415 

Twelve, the, 203-204 

Twelve Eichings from Nature, 61 

Twenty Club, Brussels, Exhibition, 260 

Twenty-fifth on the Thames, 69 

Twilight on the Ocean (see Valparaiso), 
100 

Two Little White Girls (Symphony in 
White, No. III.), 102, 103, 129, 233, 
235, 376 

Tyre Smith, The, 279 

Tyzac, Whiteley and Co., 60 


UFFIzI, the, 364-65 

Underdown, E. M., 280 

United States Military Academy, 20 
Universal Exhibition, 163, 281 
Unwin, T. F., 334, 345, 416 

Unwin, Mrs., 345 


VALENTIN, Bibi, 49 

Valparaiso, Journey to, 96-97 

Valparaiso, Paintings of, 101, 187, 376 

Valparaiso Bay, 263 

Vanderbilt, G., 351, 436 

Portrait of, 358 

Vanderbilt, Mrs., 
and Gold), 358 

Van Dyck, 390 

Van Dyke, J. C., 339 

“ Vanity Fawr,” 156, 158 

Vasari, 185 

Velarium, the, 264, 267-68 

Velasquez, 16, 47, 51, 68, 103, 118, 121, 
167, 195, 245, 254, 339, 363-64, 373, 
4II 

Velvet Gown, The (see Mrs. Leyland), 
124,.125 

Venice, 186-87, 189-96 

Venice Etchings, 51, 108, 195-200, 
203-204, 207, 218-19, 260, 312, 331 

Venice International Exhibition, 331 

Venice Museum, 109 

Venturi, Mme., 119, 135 

Venus (see Six Projects), 47, 105-106, 
234, 313, 414 

Vermeer, 195, 341 

Veronese, 54, 189, 245 

Victoria and Albert Museum. 
South Kensington 


Portrait of (Ivory 


See 


INDEX 


Victoria, 
264-65 
Vieille aux Loques, La, 32 
Viélé-Griffin, F., 320, 331 
Vinci, Leonardo da, 185 
Vistelious, Prof., 11 
Vivian, H., 228, 279 
Voivov, Prof., 11 
Vollon, A., 73, 94, 195 
Vose, G. L.,,3 


Queen, Jubilee Addresses, 


WAGNER, 70, 314 
Wales, Prince and Princess, 219, 263-64 
Walker, F., 58 
Walker, Howard, 190 
Waller, Miss Maud, 213 
Portrait of (Blue Girl), 213, 218 
Waller, Pickford R., 160 
Walton, E. A., 202, 298, 369, 424, 430, 


435 

Walton, Mrs., 430 

Wapping, 63, 65, 91, 99, 210 

Ward, H. H. and Co., 375 

Ward, Leslie, 158 

Washington, 26, 27 

Water Colour Society, 256 

Watts, G. I., 58, 82, 107, 119, 120, 126, 
147, 153, 252, 412 


Watts-Dunton, T., 79, 80, 138, 157, 
249-50 
Way, T. and T. R., 150-57, 180, 184, 


Boy, 205) 9203-204, 212, 247, 279, 
303, 311, 326, 329, 333, 349, 434 

Weary, 51, 72, 73 

Webb, Gen., 21, 23 

Webb, W., 133, 318, 375, 405, 417; 
436 

Webster, D., 20 


Wedmore, F., 39, 66, 142-43, 185, 
219-20, 281, 302, 428 

Weir, J. A., 21, 141-42, 209 

Weir, R. W., 21-22 

Westminster Abbey, Jubilee cere- 


monies, 266 
Westminster Bridge, Old, 72 
Westminster, Marquis of, 150 
Westminster, The Last of Old, 72 
West Point, I, 3, 5, 20-20, 28-20, 398, 
415-16 
Wheeler, Gen., 416 
Whibley, Ce 286, 331, 344, 393 
Whibley, Mrs. (Ethel Birnie Philip), 
272, 310, 326, 331, 336, 374, 417, 
424, 434, 436 
“ Whirlwind, The,” 279, 311 


Whistler, Mrs. Anna M. (née McNeill), 
I-20, 45, 46, 81, 88, 95, 99, 104, 
I10, 123, 124, 128, 129; death, 
206 

Anne (née Bishop), 3 

Anthony, 2 

Charles D., 5, 6 

Daniel, 2 

Deborah (see Lady Haden) 

Francis, 2-3 

Gabriel, 2 

George,"4, 6/138, 207 27,33; 52 

George Washington, I, 3-6, 14, 
16, 18; death, 18; portrait of, 
52 

Hugh, 2 

James Abbott McNeill; birth, 
I; christening, 1; journey to 
Russia, 6; early portraits, 9, 
33 ; severe illness, 15-16 ; return 
to America, 18; West Point, 
20-26; Coast Survey, 27-33; 
arrival in Paris, 33; journey 
to Alsace, 43; London, 53; 
journey to Valparaiso, 96-97; 
Ruskin Trial, 166-81 ; journey 
to Venice, 189; joins British 
Artists, 250-51 resigns, 268; 
Marriage, 271-74; the Eden 
Case, 329-30, 350-57; Inter- 
national Society of Sculptors 
Painters, and Gravers, 369-77 ; 
the Académie Carmen, 377-92 ; 
journey to Rome, 363; journey 


to Corsica, 407-409; death, 
433-36 
Portraits of himself, 50, 97— 


W. with Hat, 52—W. with the 
White Lock, 57—W. in his 
astbes ea tt i and Gold), 


359; 3 
Portrait Ge by Boldini, 350; by 


Boxall, 17, 18, 338; by Chase, 
236-37; by Fantin, 94; by 
Nicholson, 351; by Rajon, 


235 
. Bust of, by Boehm, 154, 188 
““ Whistler as I knew him,”’ 231, 240, 
243, 262 
‘‘ Whistler frame,’’ the, 90-91 
Whistler, John, 14 
Master John, 2 
Major John, 2, 3 
Joseph, 4 
Julia (née Winans), 27 
Kensington, 3 


453 


INDEX 


Whistler, Kirk Booth, 5 
Mary (née Swift), 3-4 
Ralph, 2 
Rose Fuller, 2 
Sarah, 1 
Dr. William, 5-18, 27, 75, 94, 153, 
206, 247, 272, 276; death, 368 ; 
portrait of, 95 
Mrs. William (see Miss Helen 
Ionides), 137, 153, 160, 188, 
_ 240, 272-73, 276, 424, 435 
White Girl, The (Symphony in White, 
No.1.),; 03, 107;5:60) 2-70) 73°84," 100, 
102, IIO, 130, 210 
White House, the, 159, 160, 162-64, 
180-83, 186-87 
White Note, A, 282 
White, C. Harry, 391 
Whiteley and Co., 60 
Whitman, Mrs. Sarah, 416 
Whittmore, 210 
Wilde, Oscar, 138, 142, 188, 213, 225- 
29, 243, 246, 293, 314, 328 
Wilkie, Sir David, 252 
Wilkins, W. H., 279 
Wilkinson, Mr., 188 
Williams, Capt., 51 
Williams, Charlotte, Portrait of, 325 
Williamson, Dr. G. C., 57 
Wills, W. G., 84, 174 
Wilson, H., 366, 435 
Wilstach Collection, 216, 432 
Wimbush, W. L., 355, 396, 402 
Winans, Louis, 51 
Winans, Ross, 27 
Winans, Thomas, 27, 33, 63 
Windsor Castle Collection, 
277 


108, 170, 


454 


Windus, W. L., 147 
Wine Glass, The, 158 
Winged Hat, The, 279 
Winstanley, W., 6 
Wisselingh, E. J. van, 280 
Wistler de Westhannye, John le, 2 
Woakes, Miss, 360 
Portrait of, 360 
Wolkoff, 191, 193 
Wolseley, Lord, 138 
Portrait of, 141 
Wolseley, Lady, 138, 141 
Wombat, Story of the, 80-81 
Woods, H., 189, 191, 193 
““ World, The,’”’ 156, 233, 249, 261, 267, 
280, 297 
Working Women’s College, 
Sguare Exhibition, 283 
World’s Columbian Exhibition, 308- 


Queen’s 


309 
Wortley, Stuart, 280 
Wreck, The, 51 
Wuerpel, E. H., 313, 321 
Wyndham, Hon. P., 170 
Wyndham, Hon. Mrs. P., 154, 170 


Yates, E. (‘‘ Atlas ’’), 280, 296 

““ Yellow Book, The,” 314 

Yellow Buskin, The, 159, 214, 216, 279, 
281, 299, 309, 432 

Yellow House, Lannion, the, 320 


ZAANDAM, 276-7 
Zaehmsdorf, Messrs., 265 
Zalinski, Major, 26 

Zola, E., 74, 435 
Zuechero, 70 


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